Midwinter
Released: 1990
Published by: Microprose Software, Inc.
Developed by: Maelstrom Games
Author(s): Mike Singleton, David Ollman, Valhermoso Franco, Andrew Elkerton, Peter Barnett
VGA/MCGA graphics
EGA graphics
Introduction
Originally released on the Atari ST in 1989, Midwinter was ported to the Amiga and PC in 1990. After the falling of a meteroite has sent the world into a nuclear winter, you play as John Stark, a member of the Free Villages Police Force (FVPF) on the island of Midwinter in the Azores. You must recruit the locals to support you in fending off an attack from the army of General Masters.
You navigate the snow-covered island on foot or with skis, snow buggies and cable cars to visit those you need to persuade, all the while fighting directly with the enemy. Not everyone can be recruited by you, but once you get others on your side, they too may be in a position to do so.
"Midwinter is best played on a 386DX-25 or 386DX-33 machine. It requires no additional memory, so a 1 MB system is fine. The 256-colour VGA graphics are of course the best, though the game is not too offensive to the eye running EGA. On the audio side, there is no music and not much in the way of sound effects, so go with Ad Lib or MT-32 - it's your choice.
The game is best played with a small analogue joystick for navigating around on the snow, though some may prefer to use a mouse. Whatever you choose is also the control you would need to get around the icon-driven interface (it doesn't allow both mouse and joystick combined). When outside, the left button accelerates and the right button decelerates. Similarly, when in the map view, left button zooms in, right button zooms out."
System Requirements
| System Requirements | Intel 8086/8088, 640 KB RAM, DOS 2.0 or later. Graphics support for Tandy/PCjr, CGA, EGA and VGA/MCGA (320 x 200 in 256 colours). Audio support for PC Speaker, Ad Lib and Roland MT-32. Keyboard, mouse and joystick supported. |
|---|---|
| Original Media | Five 5.25" 360 KB DS/DD floppy disks, two 3.5" 720 KB DS/DD floppy disks, two 5.25" 1.2 MB DS/HD floppy disks, or one 3.5" 1.44 MB DS/HD floppy disk. |
| Installed Size | 605 KB |
From where can it be run?
You must install the game to your hard disk. The first floppy disk comes with a rudimentary batch file called INSTALL.BAT. You need to give this a single argument which is the destination drive to copy the game to, e.g. INSTALL C:
The default directory is called MIDWINTR.
Game Audio/Video
Midwinter has no music, and minimal sound effects during gameplay.
|
Gameplay footage (Demo mode) from a Tseng Labs ET4000 on a 386DX-25. |
Copy Protection
The game's original first disk is a key disk which is checked for existence whenever the game is run. There are copies of the game on the internet that have these key disk tracks removed from the first disk.
How to Setup
When you start the game by running MIDWINTR.EXE, you are asked for the configuration you wish to run the game in. Note that only the graphics options that have been installed will be shown:
If you choose 'Joystick' as your control method, you will be asked to calibrate it. You can do this once in the game also:
Problems
Symptom: ?
Cause: ?
Resolution: ?
To Quit the Game
Strangely, there doesn't seem to be any way to exit to DOS once the game has been started. You will need to reboot your PC.
Supporting Documents
- Game Manual (PDF)
- Quick Guide and Novella (TXT)
Save Games
You can save and load the game at any time when you're not outside. To do so, go to "The Team" icon (the one with the grid of the four people), then on the far-right, use the "Save" and "Load" icons:
As you can see, you have 10 save game 'slots' available to use, though you can overwrite old save games using up a slot if need be. There are no obvious save game files that appear when you save a game, so the data likely gets added to a pre-existing game file.
Versions of the game known to exist
| Version | Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 1990 | Initial public release. |
Original Floppy Disk Contents
The floppy disks have no specific volume label. Here are each disk's contents:
Disk 1 of 2 (Key disk) (3.5" 720 KB DS/DD):
Directory of A:\ MIDDATA0 254 07-04-91 3:23p |
|
Disk 2 of 2 (3.5" 720 KB DS/DD):
Directory of A:\ ZBUFFER BIN 10,000 07-04-91 3:22p |
|
Installed Directory Contents
Once installed, the following directory structure exists in the game directory:
Full Install chosen
Directory of C:\MIDWINTR\ ADLIB SND 2,594 09-16-90 3:49p |