The Joy of Stacks – 2/11/25 – Midnight Resistance is rather good actually | It probably isn’t the Last Duel, is it? | Karate supplements | ST reading list
Keyboard controls
I had a little chinwag with subscriber Isaac this week. A conversation into which he dropped this little nugget after I bemoaned games that require you to take your hands off your joystick to give your space bar a reacharound:
It turns out, there are people out there who miss the glory 8-bit days of keyboard controlled wonder. Personally, I left keyboard controls behind when I jumped from the Acorn Electron to the Amstrad CPC in the late eighties, only briefly returning to the qwertys for a bit of Super Sprint or Trapped 2.
This got me thinking: are there any games on the ST where you can choose to play via keyboard? Sure, thanks to the modern marvel that is emulation, you can assign any input to any key and turn any game into a keyboard controlled game, but where are the ST games that shipped with the option baked in?
I’ve mentioned the two above, and I know the ST version of Galaxian allows you to define keyboard controls very similar to the manner in which 8-bit computer games worked (see screenshot below) and there’s always Thrust. Ah, Thrust (I love you 😘).
You can execute a search on Atarimania for games with keyboard controls which kicks up 2,602 games, but unfortunately, these are games with keyboard controls, not games that give you an option to play only on keys.
So, over to you, dear readers. Can you think of any Atari ST games that give you the option to play on keyboard? And is this a feature you miss from the good old days?
Midnight Resistance is Futile
This month’s STOT (the ST Offline Tournament, a monthly Atari ST score attack competition, see here for more details) focuses on the rather nifty arcade conversion of Data East’s Midnight Resistance. STOT is always a good time, and I highly recommend you jump in, but playing this game repeatedly has given me a new appreciation of just how good this game, and the ST conversion, is.
It’s programmed by Joffa Smith, a legend of the industry known for super tight ZX Spectrum coding, and it’s a real shame that he didn’t do more on the ST as the conversion here is top notch.
Midnight Resistance should have been a problem for home systems as the arcade implemented a control scheme similar to Ikari Warriors – the rotating joystick. Players could move their avatar as per usual, but also direct their fire in 8 different directions while doing so thanks to a twist of the wrist. Of course, this presents a problem to a developer porting the game to home systems – how do you implement this extra axis of control on a bog-standard stick?
Ikari Warriors implemented a toggle mechanism. You could fire in the direction of travel, or tap a key to lock your fire in a single direction. All well and good, but that wouldn’t work for a run and gun game like Midnight. Instead, Smith implemented a scheme whereby you can direct your fire with a press in the corresponding direction, but you can also modify that direction with taps on the joystick that slowly rotate the direction of fire in that direction.
It’s not a perfect solution: there is a bit of a hump to get over when first picking up the game and there are many moments when you want to change direction of fire but end up jumping into enemy fire. It is also impossible to travel in one direction and fire in another, but overall, it’s a great solution to the age old problem of squeezing bespoke arcade controls onto a limited home controller.
I highly recommend you give Midnight Resistance a try. It has a very tight control scheme, is responsive and smooth to play, has a cool shop and power-up system and each level kicks up something innovative and new: there’s always a surprise or two around the corner.
Sunday Papers
Here are some words and pictures that I enjoyed looking at this week:
Steve’s written a bloody thesis on Heroes of the Lance. S’about time someone did.
The Atari Basement plays host to Computer Hits Volume 2 this week, and blow me! It’s Tetris! On the ST! But who threw up on the background? Ssshhh… just close your eyes and let Mr Whittaker soothe your soul.
Gears of Games was diving into old ST shoot ‘em ups earlier this week. He played Typhoon. And he cheated. Unbelievable.
Over the pond we go to the Big Apple to watch a quick demo of Old Towers. Recorded straight off the CRT, Benway style. Gorgeous.
Paul Lefebvre has a little foray into Chaos’ dingy dungeon and the result is a rather lovely post about Dungeon Master that includes historical, technical and personal detail. Science and heart? Perfect.
This week, John is swearing at APB, a game I’d forgotten about when covering arcade conversions recently. I’ve always loved overhead driving games and this one is a pretty unique take on the genre.
Leave a Reply