David's Midnight Magic

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Tea Leaves

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Published on May 16, 2020 12:57:58 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm4ULa6TBlQ

Game:

David's Midnight Magic (1982)

Duration: 2:45

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24

A few weeks ago, I told you about Bill Budge’s seminal pinball game Raster Blaster. Less than a year after that game introduced the idea of fast-paced video pinball to the Apple II, Broderbund followed it up by publishing David Snider's pinball game "David's Midnight Magic."

The game was visibly modeled after the real-life Williams pinball table Black Knight - generally acknowledge by everyone, by which I mean me, to be the best pinball table ever made,

It had a number of features that made it seem very much like a real table, including the ability to nudge the machine to move the ball, mulit-play, and simulating an upper and a lower level. David's MIdnight Magic won Computer Game of the Year in 1982. Whether you prefer David’s Midnight Magic or Raster Blaster is largely a matter of taste. Raster Blaster is probably the more impressive technical achievement, since it demonstrated that it was possible at all, but David’s Midnight Magic was more refined, and the addition of mechanics such as multi ball make it a better game. When you talk to people about the history of computer games, they’ll talk about Raster Blaster, but if you ask them which one they played, it’s always David’s Midnight Magic.

David would go on to create the hit Broderbund game Serpentine the following year. Writing great games comes in the family -- You might also recognize the Snider name from David's brother, Eric, who wrote Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, and its successor Eric's All-in-1 Solitaire.

The game was ported to the Commodore 64 in 1983, and then to the Atari 8-bit computers in 1987.

Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave a note in the comments if there’s key classic game you’d like to learn more about.

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