The Games of my Life

Remember Lords of Midnight? It was one of the Games of my Life, and deservedly so. It has several remakes in active development, and you can always play the original 8-bit versions using emulators.

But one particular port is quite… useful. It’s a Java port, and can be played using just your browser.

There’s nothing like working, but having a small LoM window to look at, and make a couple of moves, from time to time.

Link: LOMJAR: Lords of Midnight Java port

(Note: This review concerns the ZX Spectrum version. The C64 one was, IMO, terrible - great graphics and music, but none of the playability, and Robocop could jump!)

Ocean’s Robocop, released during the company’s greatest years, when it specialized itself in arcade and movie conversions, is one of their best ever. A multi-level action game, with a couple of mini-games between levels, and including great graphics, sound (including actually understandable digitized speech - something almost unseen at the time) and music (the title tune was one of those “load up the game just to listen to it” ones).

But the best thing about the game was how great it was to play. It really felt like the movie - unlike other games of its kind, your character was slow moving, didn’t jump (except on the C64 ), and most enemies, indeed (the ones that moved, that is) were faster than you (unlike most games where you’re quicker than everything else). However, you were tough. And had a great gun. And were able to shoot it in several directions.

The idea was not to dodge bullets, but to kill every enemy before they shot at you. If they did… well, you’re Robocop, you can handle a few bullets.

And who can forget the level where (SPOILER!) you try to arrest Dick Jones, but Directive 4 comes into action, you drop your gun, and then have to fight ED-209 with just your fists?

The 3-way gun was a bit weird, though. If it existed in real life, it would kill enemies… by making them laugh to death.

Spectrum action games didn’t come much better than this.

As usual, the game is available at World of Spectrum. And Speccy emulators are perfect, these days - even on Series 60 phones, or Palms, or Pocket PCs, or almost anything.

No, I haven’t forgotten the C64 - although I only had one quite late in its life, there were some unforgettable masterpieces for that little 1 MHz (!) beast. This, System 3’s The Last Ninja 2 is certainly one of them.

Oddly enough, I played the Spectrum version first, and one tends to get attached to the version he plays first. But the C64 version blew me away. One screen of this game has more atmosphere than many entire games. The music is hauntingly beautiful (all 13 tunes). There’s a sense of almost tangible despair, of being in a world where everyone tries to kill you, yet, everything is familiar - a park, city streets, sewers, an office building, and so on. And the environment is at least as dangerous an enemy as your human enemies. The whole game is hard and unforgiving - no “tutorials where you can’t do wrong”, or any kind of hand-holding here. But the feeling of finally passing a level (after hours or even days), and getting a beautifully drawn loading screen for the next one, complete with a new tune, and the suspense of not knowing what’s next…

Oh, and there’s an alligator in the sewers. I knew it all along.

If you’re not a graphics junkie (or even if you are, but can see games in the context of when they were released), get an emulator and the game, and try it for yourself. You’ll truly appreciate how sad it is that these days there are only first person shooters, sports games and MMORPGs.

Hint: even if you, at the time, finished the Spectrum version (or even another one, such as the Amiga or the PC ports), try the original C64 version. It’s the only one that really “got” it.

Do you like “Lord of the Rings”? Tolkien’s epic, the best known fantasy book in the world? Do you like Peter Jackson’s fantastic movie adaptations? If so, isn’t the idea of living the epic, even if “just” in a video game, tempting?

If you want to re-live the movies, the best choice is Electronic Arts’ two games, “The Two Towers”, and, especially, “Return of the King”. They’re fantastic, whether on a console or on the PC. But they’re movie adaptations - basically, you “play” the movies’ main battles. Those two are great action games, I’m not trying to diminish them in any way.

But if you want to re-live the books…

… there’s not a better choice than Mike Singleton’s 1984 classic, Lords of Midnight.

Nope, it’s not “Tolkien-licensed”. It’s not an official LotR adaptation in any way. And Mike actually wrote a short novella, which was included with the game, and was a joy to read.

But the game, a mix of adventure and strategy, was, 21 years ago, and is, right now, the best way to re-live Lord of the Rings - not an exploration of Middle Earth, not a meeting with Tolkien’s characters, but, instead, what Gandalf - who orchestrated the entire strategy - must have felt, and the challenges he had to meet.

Lords of Midnight is the perfect, still unequaled blend of grand strategy - defeating, or stopping, or at least delaying the Dark Lord’s might by force of arms - with high adventure - a heroic quest of a brave hero who attempts, without an army behind him, using only stealth and courage, to destroy the Dark Lord’s main source of power - which, obviously, can only be done deep inside the Dark Lord’s territory. Sound familiar?

Really, play this game. There’s a reason it still has an active community, with enhancements, remakes, multi-player versions and so on… after 21 years.