Midnight Resistance Longplay (Arcade) [60 FPS]

Developed and published by Data East in 1989

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For today's video, I finally got around to checking out the original arcade version of Midnight Resistance.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it's horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up where up to two players must fight through multiple stages of explosive action on a mission to rescue their family from the clutches of the evil entity known only as King Crimson. The arcade version featured a special joystick that not only supported the usual directional controls, but could also be rotated in order to change the direction in which the player was aiming.

The premise of each of the game's levels is simple - shoot everything that moves as you move towards the level exit. You'll encounter a wide variety of enemies to destroy throughout each of the game's 9 levels, ranging from conventional military ordnance (troops, tanks and choppers) to the more outlandish. If fighting whirling buzz-saws of death atop a giant tree doesn't seem strange enough, the final stage transports you into outer space where you'll take on a whole host of floating TV screens with evil, cackling faces before the final showdown with the nightmare-fuel monstrosity that is King Crimson himself.

Much of the enjoyment that shooters provide comes from the arsenal of destructive toys available to the player and Midnight Resistance is no different in this regard. Unlike similar games, power-ups do not drop during the actual levels, but are locked away in weapon rooms that separate each stage. Keys must be collected from the orange ninja-like bad guys you encounter in each stage in order to unlock power-ups, and, with a limited number of keys available, you have to think carefully about what to buy.

The game boasts some pretty decent graphics for the time, featuring bright colours, great sprites and multiple layers of parallax scrolling. Unfortunately, some of the animations are a tad basic, such as the player's running animation which contains a total of 3 frames and looks a bit silly (even the home conversions managed to improve on this). It's also a shame that the game's frame-rate starts to chug whenever the screen gets busy, although this can give you more time to react to bad guys and their attacks.

As for audio, the game features some very catchy tunes that you'll be humming along to throughout the game. The sound effects are also good and there'll be plenty of booms and rumbling bass to accompany your escapades.

Although I enjoyed the game overall, I have to admit that I'm not wildly keen on the controls. Although it might have felt like an innovative feature at the time, I find the rotating joystick just makes aiming over-complicated and fiddly. I'd have been happier with a control set up such as the one used in the C64 and Amiga versions where the player's aim changes depending on the direction the joystick was being pushed.

Despite this, the game remains a lot of fun to play and remains one of the quintessential shoot 'em up games from the 80's arcades. It went on to receive home conversions for the C64, Amiga, Mega Drive and other platforms, some of which I've covered on my channel so be sure to check them out!

If you're looking for some top shooting action then you could certainly do worse than this!
#retrogaming