In 1984, maybe 1985, my brother Darren, introduced me to a game on his zx spectrum – Lords of Midnight. It’s a wargame/adventure game which was revolutionary in its time. Written by Mike Singleton. You can read much about the history of the game on its wiki page.
In about 1990 I was playing around with a new Spectrum+3 that I had bought and decided to reverse engineer Lords of Midnight. I just wanted to know how it worked.
After performing the reverse engineering, I ported the game to the PC. This indirectly led me to getting a job in the games industry when another industry legend Jon Ritman saw the project and suggested I should think about joining the games industry, and thus everything else that has followed in my career over the last 20 years.
My port was released along side Mike’s official 3rd part of the game. Lords of Midnight:The Citadel in 1995.
In 1999 I started work on an updated version of Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge. A project that was never finished and over the years has fallen by the wayside. But much good came out of it.
My website ICEMARK.com ( Icemark being the land that Doomdark’s Revenge was set in ) was setup and covers much Lords of Midnight material. It has become the unofficial central site for midnight related material.
My reverse engineering of Lords of Midnight and a number of other spectrum titles that followed, led to me performing some work for a New York law firm on 3d Patent Case 4,734,690
In 2004 I wrote a 10 page article about Lords of Midnight in which I also interview Mike Singleton. It was my first piece of published work. Which in turn led to a number subsequent articles.
I host a website for the game Midnight/MU developed originally Jean-Yves Rouffiac, a multi-user take on the Midnight games, and have been involved in the development in some small way over the years.
Needless to say, that Lords of Midnight has played a major part of my life for the last 27 years.
So, taking all the above into account, you can imagine my jubilation, when Mike emailed me at the end of January to discuss the concept of us collaborating on a Lords of Midnight project….
… further details of this new project to follow…
Great, great news. Can we assume this to be an official iPhone version?
Yes, this will be an official iPhone/iPad release.
I will cover more detail in further posts, but this is a Mike Singleton and Chris Wild project starting with iPhone and iPad. But hopefully other platforms will follow. Namely Mac and Windows, but hopefully other mobile devices like Windows7 and Android.
Please tell me an Android version will follow!
That is the intention!
Awesome! Congrats!
Exciting news and I’m waiting in anticipation. Good luck !
Great news! Too bad I don’t use cellphones for playing 😀
I already have it running under Windows and OSX!
This is wonderful news! I have been playing some old speccy games using an emulator on my old mac. To think that it will be available on my ipad is fantastic. I will buy it in a minute! Thanks so much, wish you the best and success in this endeavor!
Dan
fantastic news Chris! I’m looking forward to the Windows version (will Doomdark’s Revenge be included too?)
As a fan of these games from my Speccy days this is amazing news Chris, especially as i’m getting an Ipad2 in a couple of weeks 🙂
Not to run before you walk but could this lead to “The eye of the moon” at long last?
Will these be a straight port or are you looking to revamp everything?
Good luck with everything.
Andy (from Milnrow)
Andy ( from Milnrow – just down the road from my adopted home town Shaw ),
There will be changes, but in spirit it should feel the same.
As for Eye of the Moon, or iOfTheMoon as we now affectionately call it… 🙂 we can hope…
Dave,
Doomdark’s Revenge will be a separate release if everything goes to plan.
Chris
Can’t tell you how chuffed I am, you’ve made my day. Any chance it might be completed this year?
Andy
Andy,
I really really hope so.
Chris
Hi Chris,
This is really great news…. will there be any chance of a version running on Linux – I made the switch a couple of years ago and really miss LOM.
Cheers,
Kieron
Chris,
For extra nostalgia please will you consider including a direct port of each game as well, including a faint keyboard overlay on screen below main screen, if you don’t ask you don’t get! 😉
Cheers
Andy
Now all I need is for someone to release it has an arcade game on the 360 and my day will be complete 🙂
If we get good traction on it… I’m going all the way… 🙂
Another call for a Linux version here please!
Well, I’ve noticed that the Airplay has a Linux deployment option…
HI Chris,
this is the best news I’ve read in years!
What is the timeline for the iOS version? And will you be able to replay ‘classic’ Midnight and/or a new version of it?
Can’t wait…all the best
Rob
Oh I meant to say that the reason this is the best news in a long time was because I recall I played LoM for months and months – not only doing all 3 styles of game (Morkin quest, Military victory and combined ‘epic’) but I also went the trouble of visiting every single citadel and keep and wiping out every single enemy solider, so that the midnight was completely cleansed of Doomdark!
I can’t wait to try that again and I don’t recall there has been a single game since (including DR). regardless of platform or technology that was so immersive!
Therefore I would request however you re-imagine the LoM (and I am sure it will be truly excellent) that is will be possible to play ‘Classic’ LoM (minus the bugs as per your PC version) with the same rules (even would be happy to see the original 8 bit graphics as well thrown in for nostalgia!) ?
All the best
Rob
Rob, there won’t be a massive re-imagine, but there will be changes.
As to classic version – it might happen but I won’t promise anything – it might be a post release, release.
That is great news,
I spent a week playing on LOM in my teens. I did get Military victory before I found which localtion to poke and change the characters location ( also the quantitys of weapons ). I was waiting for a backport to the Dragon 32 or 128, but a version for the LG X2 will do just fine.
I was just a kid when the originals were out and too young to really ‘get’ them fully. I played a remake a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. This sort of game is EXACTLY what the iPad/tablet format is for, great desicion. I look forward to seeing and buying it on the App Store!
A remake of Doomdark’s Revenge on PC has been on my x-mas wish list for years… 🙂