David's Midnight Magic

David's Midnight Magic is an Apple II pinball simulation written by David Snider and released by Broderbund in 1982.[1] The game was published in Europe by Ariolasoft. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64 and in 1987 Atari Corporation published it in cartridge form for the then-new Atari XEGS. The box art is by illustrator Marc Ericksen.

This article is about the Brøderbund Software game. For the Atari 2600 game, see Midnight Magic (Atari 2600).
David's Midnight Magic
Publisher(s)Broderbund
Ariolasoft (EU)
Atari Corp. (cartridge)
Programmer(s)David Snider[1]
Martin Kahn (C64)[2]
Platform(s)Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64
Release1982: Apple, Atari 8-bit
1983: C64[2]
1987: Atari 8-bit cartridge
Genre(s)Pinball
Mode(s)Single-player, 2-3 players alternating

Gameplay

David's Midnight Magic is closely modeled after the popular real-life pinball table Black Knight, released by Williams in 1980.

Reception

Softline stated that David's Midnight Magic "ratifies Bill Budge's extraordinary program as a programming tour de force", as it was only equal to Budge's Raster Blaster despite being released nine months later. The magazine concluded that "the fact that [David is] second should not dull the glitter of this effort".[3] Computer Gaming World stated that Midnight Magic was a better game than Raster Blaster, but lamented the requirement of removing write protection from the floppy, thus voiding the warranty, in order to save high scores.[4] The Commodore 64 Home Companion called the game "extraordinarily realistic ... complete with all the features that make pinball so seductive".[5]

David's Midnight Magic won "Computer Game of the Year" at the 4th annual Arkie Awards, where judges described it as "a program that is both an exciting video game and a fairly faithful evocation of pinball mystique".[6]:32

Legacy

Atari Corporation released a pinball game called Midnight Magic for the Atari 2600 that plays differently from the similarly named David's Midnight Magic.

David Snider's brother Eric later used his first name in the title of Eric's Ultimate Solitaire.

In 2005, a Visual Pinball recreation of David's Midnight Magic was created called David's Midnight Magic 2005 which is rendered with modern 3D graphics.

See also

References
  1. Hague, James. "The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers".
  2. David's Midnight Magic at Lemon 64
  3. Tommervik, Al (January 1982). "David's Midnight Magic". Softline. p. 32. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  4. Greenlaw, Stanley (March–April 1982), "Pinball Mania", Computer Gaming World, pp. 35, 38
  5. "Broderbund Software". The Commodore 64 Home Companion. 1984. pp. 166–167. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  6. Kunkel, Bill; Katz, Arnie (March 1983). "Arcade Alley: The Best Computer Games". Video. Reese Communications. 6 (12): 32–33. ISSN 0147-8907.
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