Midnight Magic

Name:	Midnight Magic
Company:	Atari
Model #:	CX-26129
Programmer:	Glenn Axworthy
Year:	1984
Released?	Yes
Notes:	Originally called Pinball Wizard

Starting off life as an Apple II computer game by Broderbund called David's Midnight Magic (named after programmer David Snider), the Atari 2600 port was originally called Pinball Wizard after the famous Who song from Tommy.  After deciding that this name wasn't going to work (or fearing a lawsuit from the Who), Atari changed the name to simply Midnight Magic cutting out poor David in the process.  Interestingly the game calls itself Midnite Magic on the title screen due to the lack of space for the full title.  No matter what you call it, Midnight Magic is a whole lot of pinball fun on the 2600!

Although the game is supposed to be a port of David's Midnight Magic, the 2600 version is a completely different game.  The reason for this is most likely due to the fact that the original game used a asymmetric table (based on Black Knight 2000) which would have been very difficult to implement on the 2600.  Midnight Magic ditches the original table for a simpler symmetric table that could easily been done on the 2600 through playfield mirroring.  Although the table in Midnight Magic is less complicated, it still plays a mean game of pinball.  The controls are simple, pushing left activates the left flipper, right activates the right flipper, and down activates both flippers at the same time.  There is only one option in the game and that determines if the center post and kickers (which keep your ball from going down the drains or center of the screen) are always active or need to be activated by shooting all the targets.  With the left difficulty switch set to A they're always active (easy mode) and when set to B they need to be activated by hitting all the targets (hard mode).

Scoring is straight forward.  The drop targets are worth 100 points, but if the arrow is pointing at it it's worth 3,000 points.  If you hit all five targets you score 5,000 points and the score multiplier increases.  The bumpers are worth 100 points when not lit and 1,000 when lit.  The rollover targets are worth 500 points, but if the score multiplier is on you'll also gain an extra ball.  The targets above the spinners are worth 100 points an d the spinner is worth 10 points for each spin it makes.  The bottom lanes are worth 500 points when lit, and if the kickers are active you'll gain 10 points for being kicked out of the drain.  Finally the walls above the bottom flippers are worth 25 points and if the ball rolls over the white line to the left and right of the bottom flippers you'll earn 10 points.

Although it was completed by early-1984, Midnight Magic didn't see a release until the 2600 revival years in 1986.  During this time Atari released several games which had been completed in 1984 but never released to add new titles to it's 2600 re-release lineup (Solaris, Jr. Pac-Man, and Roadrunner also fall into this category).  Midnight Magic is a great improvement on Atari's earlier Video Pinball and actually feels like a real machine.  It's debatable whether or not Midnight Magic is better than Spectravideo's Bumper Bash (which featured a scrolling screen and used the paddles for flipper buttons), but it's a solid pinball game nevertheless. 

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