You play as one or two resistance soldiers, whose family has been kidnapped by a mysterious villain called King Crimson, including their grandfather, who is a scientist, and he's being forced to build a doomsday superweapon for them.
The game was first made for Arcade Game systems and then ported to various platforms in 1990. It is an instant fireworks show with a lot of fast-paced action, unique enemies and bosses. The original arcade version made used of a rotary joystick similar to its predecessor Heavy Barrel, allowing for separate controls for aiming and moving.
Midnight Resistance provides examples of:
- Airborne Mooks: Enemies on hover-packs tends to show up in areas with platforming elements, flying circles around you while taking potshots.
- Background Boss: The second boss, a squadron of fighter planes. They'll actually fly in formation in the background after every bombing run, although this only just shows to the player how many of them are left.
- BFG: Quite impressive choice of ways to do damage. Absolutely necessary for boss levels.
- Bottomless Magazines: The default gun has an unlimited ammo.
- Continuing is Painful: You lose power-ups after death.
- Degraded Boss: The first boss returns as a normal enemy as early as stage 2.
- Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: When two people play, it means more power-up keys and more enemies at the same time.
- Flying Face: King Crimson, the game's Final Boss upon revealing himself, turns out to be a gigantic severed skinless head with a jet booster in place of his neck. And will hover all over the place trying to attack you. If you kill him, King Crimson's brain gains a life on it's own as a Brain Monster to resume the fight.
- Ground by Gears: The level in the factory have gigantic gears advancing on you in an attempt to squish you into a pulp, until you shoot those to bits.
- Homing Projectile: Grey rockets fired from your rocket launcher can chase after enemies and home in on the nearest target. Red ones, in contrast, can't.
- IKEA Weaponry: Collect red keys on your way to upgrade to better weapons.
- Kill It with Fire: The flamethrower weapon allows you to incinerate large groups of neemy mooks standing near to each other.
- Multiple Endings: The only difference being whichever relatives you rescue will be standing with you on the ending screen.
- Obstructive Foreground: There's an area halfway through the game where you're crossing a catwalk under a waterfall, with said waterfall in the foreground obscuring enemies coming left ad right.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Your character dies instantly when hit.
- Sadistic Choice: If you have less than six keys when you reach the captured family members, you'll have to leave at least one behind to die.
- Save the Princess: The Big Bad has kidnapped the protagonists' family members.
- Sequential Boss: King Crimson needs to be defeated twice, his second form turning him into a Brain Monster who continues battling.
- Shows Damage: As bosses take damage, they gradually explode and gain smoking cracks.
- Spread Shot: The 3-Way Gun fires bullets in an arc covering much of the screen.
- Unwilling Suspension: All of the family members of the two resistance members are detained this way, their wrists are bound overhead while hanging inside a glass cell, each containing the family, which includes the grandfather (who is supposed to be building a superweapon for their captors).
- Wall of Weapons: More than one area in the game is a wall containing a row of different firearms to choose from, ranging from flamethrowers to rocket launchers and heavy machine-guns. Unfortunately the game allows only 1 type of firearm at a time.
- Wolfpack Boss: The second boss, a squadron of fighter jets that drop bombs on the player. They don't have too much health individually and appear one at a time (with maximum two on screen) attacking only once each run, but you have to take down ten of them.
