Midwinter

Midwinter is a sprawling action-strategy simulation in which the player leads a resistance movement on a frozen island invaded by a hostile army. Instead of linear missions, the game offers an open world with dozens of characters, each with their own skills and equipment and each directly controllable by the player - from foot soldiers and skiers to hang-glider pilots. The goal is to organize the resistance, coordinate its individual members, and gradually drive the invaders off the island, with the method of achieving that largely left up to the player.

Technically, this was an exceptionally ambitious project for 1989: the entire island was rendered as a continuous 3D landscape with no loading between areas, traversable by snowmobile, skis, or air. On the Atari ST the game ran in both wireframe and filled 3D graphics, which, despite the platform's hardware limitations, managed to convey a sense of a vast, open world. Controls for individual characters and vehicles differed by type, requiring the player to adapt to different control schemes within a single game. Characters also had their own morale and fatigue, so long marches or repeated combat could take resistance members out of action just as effectively as a direct clash with the enemy.

At release, Midwinter was praised above all for the scope and freedom it offered players - the concept of an open world with character choice was thoroughly unusual in 1989 on the eight-bit successor generation. The game was well ahead of its time and is often cited as an early example of what later became standard in open-world games; its success later earned it a sequel, Midwinter II: Flames of Freedom. Today Midwinter is interesting chiefly as a historical milestone - its ambition, combined with the hardware of the era, still commands respect, even though the controls and pacing feel archaic by modern standards.

Why play: For lovers of gaming history who will appreciate just how far ahead of its time the game was with its open-world concept and character choice - even though the controls and pacing feel archaic today.