Midwinter

Midwinter was released in 1989 by Maelstrom games and considered to be one of the most influential games around. It combined First Person Shooter with Role Playing and Strategy elements too. Although the game was a critical success, the learning curve was very steep, and no-one would know what to do unless they had the instruction manual on hand. The game covered 160,000 square miles in what could be described as "nuclear winter."

My review:
Well, for the time it certainly looks impressive. Unfortunately, the control system does seem a bit botched. You have the choice of 3 control methods, and god help you if you pick the joystick. If there isnt one plugged in, you are screwed. When you switch to a different control method the one you originally picked ceases to function. I picked the mouse as the instruction manual recommended I use it.
The training phase is certainly fun, although I do have a mixed reaction with the modes of transport:
Skiing: Perfectly responsive, although can be slow going uphill unless you have your finger pinned on the left mouse button.
Hang-Gliding: Seriously, WTF?
Snowmobile: Definitely the fastest, and perfectly responsive.
Sniping: No fire button?
I seriously did not understand the campaign one bit. Syncronised watches?? The reason I had to crash into that church was because there was no button to quit skiing, except the training mode which is X.
Score: 7/10, it certainly showed the world what it was capable of and was really impressive for the time, unfortunately it is skewed down due to its insane learning curve.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• mid
• winter
• midwinter
• 1989
• maelstrom
• games
• rpg
• fps
• strategy
• dos
• old
• skiing
• snow
• hills
• microplay
• rainbird
• action
• open
• world

[blade004]

Is this the Atari ST version? I never actually played the game despite having an Amiga but i remembered the review score that ACE Magazine gave it which was 941 (which translates pretty much to 94%) so i found that very interesting! Why didn't i get the game, i have no idea :( But these are some beautiful graphics for the ST version (if that is what its on) that are running very smoothly :)

[DSCraze]

@blade004

Silly silly. Its the DOS version :) I just have a random collection of old games to try out and show on YouTube. Subscribe for more videos! Hopefully my next one will be Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold.

[Blauwind84]

This Game was real good. I played it in my teenage days on an Amiga 500. But this Player is bad.

[DSCraze]

@Blauwind84

Thumbs up for saying I suck at this game! :D

[SpotOnJ2K]

Wow this is like the only gameplay footage of this game on youtube, thanks for posting! Is it actually any fun?

[Relugus]

@cacaroG IMHO This is an XBox360/PS3 game trapped in the body of a 16-bit game. It was way ahead of its time, so much so that the hardware of the time could not match the game's ambition.

[cacaroG]

One of the best (and ambitious) games ever made. Way, way ahead of its time.

[HardWarUK]

@DSCraze Slow the cycles down and chose soundblaster pro in the dosbox config. If hat's too difficult, get a front end like D-Fend which makes it easy to install and tweak DOS games! I have over 100 SOS games on one partition that take up about 2gb and my D-Fend allows me to just find the game I want to play from the list (listed in alphabetical order) and double click on it. D-Fend calls up DOSBox, uses the D-Fend DOSBox config for that game,and starts it in one go!

[HardWarUK]

@DSCraze Ahh, so you are young, well done for having a brain and playing games like this! I do envy you your age and IQ! :) But Elite DID come out first! I am old enough to have played Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge by the same designer, on my Commodore 64, which I sill own! :)

[DSCraze]

@HardWarUK

Midwinter was released in '89. I was born in '94 :D

[HardWarUK]

@DSCraze Elite came out in 1985 - this came out in 1994 I believe. So you must be a young person, which makes me jealous of you! :)

[RobbieLFS]

I wish that will be a remake from it, but i think there a not enough fans for it.

[paulpm1974]

I liked the game, not sure I ever knew what to do or finished it, it's been a while :)

Thanks.

[dialchemy]

Way before its time, a classic.

[truelazerlight]

@arand4 I guess it's not as big as Frontier - Elite 2 ;-)