The Lords of Midnight

1001 Video Games

Lords of Midnight appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Competition

Beyond ran a competition associated with the game: The first player to complete the game and send the printouts (the game allows to print pretty much every information) would see his campaign turned into a novel. However, they did not find a publisher to go through with that plan. An alternative plan was to turn it into a graphic novel by the staff of Crash! magazine, but that also did not work out. Mike Singleton remembered in an 2004 interview that the lucky winner was compensated with another prize. It is unknown if this ties in with the below "Crash!" trivia entry.

Crash!

The first person to complete the game was Robin Candy, who reviewed it for Crash! magazine. When they featured it on their covertape seven years later, he wrote the playing guide. This included basic gameplay and control details, as well as a vague, semi-prose guide to how he completed it.

Development

According to Singleton, there were only seven months between his first meeting with Beyond's Mike Pratt and the final master copy of the game.

Sound

Unusually the Commodore 64 version of the game did not have any sound.

Title

Singleton's first idea was to name the game Lords of Atlantis while he was still experimenting with the landscaping technology. However, he was convinced by Beyond to choose another name.

Awards

• ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)
  • March 1991 (issue #42) - Included in the list Greatest Games of all Time in category Strategy Games (editorial staff choice)
• Commodore Format
  • April 1991 (Issue 7) - listed in the A to Z of Classic Games article (Great)
  • July 1993 (Issue 34) - Modern Classics: FRP & RPG
• Retro Gamer
  • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #53 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
• Zzap!
  • January 1990 (Issue 57) – 'The Best Games of the 80's Decade' (Robin Hogg / Phil King)