[Playing…] Midnight Mutants

Some consoles were not very lucky in terms of sales and catalog, but they can still provide some eye-catching games, as happened with this one.Midnight Mutantsfor the forgotten Atari 7800.

This title tells us a story worthy of a horror movie: In the year 1747, Dr. Evil is burned for witchcraft and, many years later, during a night ofhalloween,returns from the dead and turns the current world into a nightmare full of monstersof all kinds. We will have to find and eliminate Dr. Evil, a very difficult task, but at least we have Grandpa Munster's advice.

This game was one of the last official Atari 7800 releases and that means it is not very well known (although little by little its popularity has been increasing, I suppose in part due to having Al Lewis from theMunster familyon the cover).

Midnight Mutantsis quite ambitious for an Atari 7800, since it proposesan open world adventure where we can do practically whatever we want. Obviously, we will have problems if we go through the most difficult areas without being prepared, but the freedom of being able to move freely is appreciated.

Because of this, we will see each other on many occasions.not knowing if we are going on the right pathor if we will be trapped in an area from which we will not be able to leave (or survive) because we went without the necessary items. In these circumstances we can turn to the menu, where Grandpa Munster will give us advice (some quite useful, others not so much). Our protagonist has a life bar and a blood purity marker, if either of them reaches 0 we will be in trouble.

The world of Midnight Mutants is quite varied, as we will see destinations as different as a mansion, a church, a pumpkin field, a cliff, a cabin, several caves, a laboratory, a forest or a boat, all seasoned with music that varies from slow and sinister to fast and disturbing.The graphics are somewhat schematic, but it is perfectly understood what we are seeing.

The enemies are typicalwhat we can expect in a game of this theme (bats, zombies, wolves, pumpkin men, birds, ghosts...) all with a fairly simple finish and correct but not surprising animations (thezombiesThey are the ones that move the best and when you kill them their heads pop off).Where the game really shines is in the bosses.which, although they do not move, have a more interesting design and usually take up the entire screen. In fact, I'd say some of the bosses are some of the best I've seen on this console.

Midnight MutantsIt's a pretty interesting adventure. Unfortunately, it hasa couple of errors that become somewhat obvious. The first is that on many occasionswe will not know where to goor what areas you can enter or not (at first I didn't know that you could enter the church because I didn't see any door), so we will have to spend quite a few hours playing the game to find the objects that help us advance. The second flaw is that when moving and attacking we will have to be very precise, because the game is presented in a perspective that makes it quite difficult to hit the target, which can play tricks on us in life or death situations.

Crypticism is common in older adventure games, so I'm not surprised to find it inMidnight Mutants. But there is also another drawback that makes the game quite difficult, and that is thatwe only have one life. If they kill us, we will have to start over from the beginning of the game (there are no passwords, no way to continue from where we died).  So to complete this adventure we will have to look for the diamonds that increase the maximum life and keep it as high as possible using potions and drinking water from the well, while we get the most efficient weapons (the ax and fireballs) or we will constantly die during our exploration, with the frustration that this entails.

Midnight MutantsIt is a very interesting adventure game, with a very particular theme, appropriate music and the appearance of Grandpa Munster. Obviously,It requires us to put in many hours to be able to advance., but that is common in games of this type, so I recommend it to people who enjoy exploring and feel a certain devotion to the Halloween theme.

I am not going to deny that this game has flaws, but its proposal is interesting and, in a way, I would have loved to see it have some kind of continuation or even a remake, correcting the flaws, adding more areas to explore and improving the playable experience.