The Classic PC Gaming Era (1977-1989) - Midwinter
I was stunned to discover this amazingly ambitious open-world action game that’s like a cross between Just Cause 2 and Ghost Recon, but with skiing.
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Mike Singleton / Microplay Software / Rainbird Software
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Somewhat playable
BEST VERSIONS: MS-DOS (though the Atari ST original is the definitive one)
I’m a little hesitant to recommend Midwinter to modern gamers because it’s one of those awkward evolutionary steps in gaming that was something really new and different at the time, but which wasn’t quite strong enough to take things into a new era the way games like Dungeon Master did. At the same time, Midwinter is such an amazingly ambitious and interesting game that I feel like if I didn’t at least discuss it, I’d be leaving out what is quite likely one of the most underrated games of the late 1980s and early 1990s. If you can take the time to learn Midwinter’s mechanics and master its challenging controls, you’ll find it’s an interesting addictive game that’s well worth your trouble.
The premise of Midwinter is that you’re a peace officer named Captain John Stark and you have to explore a snow-covered island and recruit freedom fighters from the local resistance movement to help defeat the oppressive General Masters from taking over with his military. There are 32 recruits available (including your own girlfriend!), but you can only select a handful in each playthrough. Though you start as Captain Stark, you can flip between recruits as you have them, allowing you to station team members around the island and carry out tactical operations. Why the island is covered in snow and how the world you’re exploring came to be is a complex story explained by a novella in the game’s manual. Suffice it to say that this is a post-apocalyptic future where a humongous asteroid smacked into the Earth and caused a nuclear winter.
The hook here is that the snow-covered island is fully 3D and explorable via skis, cable-car gondolas or vehicles. Initially, you’re only armed with a sniper rifle, some grenades and your trusty skis, but once you start exploring, you can find snow buggies in three different sizes as well as hang gliders. Learning how to utilize vehicles properly enables you to progress towards repelling the invaders, but they are extremely difficult to steer and require a lot of finesse (and perhaps some time in the game’s training mode) to utilize properly.
The game is played out in two-hour (in game time) turns, and at the end of each cycle, the allies synchronize their watches and make a report. It’s important to pay attention to each team member’s health and ensure that their arms and legs are not broken, as this will limit their ability to utilize gear and vehicles. When a character is injured, they will make their way to the closest town and try to rest up, though this can get them captured if they’re in enemy territory. You can also have them fire a signal flare for rescue if things are looking really dire.
Though it’s not as intuitive as modern games, Midwinter offers some surprisingly robust options for interacting with the world. You can enter buildings and turn some of them into bases where you can eat or sleep (an action that becomes increasingly necessary as the game goes on to preserve your stamina and health). Church steeples can provide excellent sniping points. Most buildings can be destroyed, and this feature actually comes in handy when you need to spring an ally from a police station, but it’s also necessary to sabotage and destroy factories, warehouses and fuel synthesis plants to weaken General Masters’ forces.
There’s also a heavy strategic element involved that makes Midwinter feel a bit like a real-time strategy game. Captain Stark and his allies have to capture and protect heat mines for power and take control of radio towers in order to expand their influence on the island. Villages start out sympathetic to the resistance fighters but can be captured by the army and cause allies to be imprisoned. Even the allies you recruit can have different strategic purposes; peace officers are better at military actions but are more easily detected and captured. Civilians are able to slip through enemy lines but aren’t able to directly take on enemies as capably.
The army itself is made up of six Colonels under whom there are five squadrons each led by a Captain. Both are found within command vehicles called Snow-Witches that are difficult to take down, but which are high-value targets since their destruction brings an end to the squadron or brigade. You can also weaken the armies by taking out their ammunition vehicles or fuel tankers. It’s extremely dangerous to approach vehicles on foot, so it’s better to snipe from a concealed location. Your bullets are able to cause some damage, but you have to be wary of flying drones that can either drop bombs on you or report your location to an artillery battery. You can also utilize vehicles for more effective strikes, though even then, you need to utilize hit-and-run tactics and guerilla style ambushes because you’re likely to otherwise be quickly outgunned.
If you’re reading all of this and thinking about what an amazing experience Midwinter must be, you’re not far off - it’s an impressively made game with a ton to do and an amazing amount of depth. But there are three things that make the game less than ideal to play today. The first is the controls, which are driven by a very unusual mouse and keyboard combo and which take some serious training to get used to. The second is the frame rate, which is fairly acceptable on the DOS port in an emulator, but which is extremely low on the superior Atari ST and Amiga versions. The third is the crudeness of the 3D graphics, which feature short draw distances and extremely low-polygon models, often making it difficult to see anything that’s too far away. If ever a game needed a remake in a modern 3D engine, it’s Midwinter.
But if you want to play the game today (and I highly recommend that you do!), I’d try the MS-DOS version, which I found to be the easiest to control and compromised only slightly by less impressive graphics and sound. The Atari ST version is the original and definitely turned a lot of heads when it came out in 1989, but the 1990 Amiga version is also quite good and plays well.
Midwinter also received a sequel in 1991 called Flames of Freedom which is an even bigger and more impressive game for its time. We will certainly cover it later in this series.
As Our Series Continues…
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about 3D games, flight simulators, sports games, gameroom games, puzzle games, unusual games and so much more.
And while you’ll definitely see some titles from prominent North American publishers like Sierra On-Line, Infocom, Activision, Electronic Arts, Brøderbund, SSI, MicroProse, Lucasfilm Games, Epyx and Sir-Tech in the mix, you’ll also see references to games from the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain and Japan.
If you’ve missed the earlier entries in the series, which cover ASCII games, adventure games, wargames, strategy games and role-playing games, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 1. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!