Arcade Archives: Midnight Landing
Oct. 23rd, 2025 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tepidsnakeThis week's Arcade Archives release is... Midnight Landing (Taito, 1987)
Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)
PSN
Switch
Arcade Archives 2 (current-gen consoles)
PSN
Switch 2
US
Xbox
Both the Japanese and English ROMs are included. You can play with gyro controls (PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2) and the USB CyberStick (PS4, Switch w/convertor) and adjust the game's analogue settings to have a control experience closer to the arcade game.
One of the more imaginative ways to simulate a 3D environment with just 2D assets, Midnight Landing is a pretty serious flight sim that tasks you with landing this plane safely at the airport without crashing, overrunning the runway or straying too far off-course (Taito Airlines have a strict 'no go-arounds' policy apparently). You join the flight just as it begins to approach the runway with command over the control stick and throttle, so use them in tandem with the instruments displaying things like your pitch, height and speed to gauge the correct approach, with each successive round adding more powerful winds and altering things like distance to vary things up. Don't worry too much about getting it dead-on when it comes to landing, as long as you're on terra-firma, the auto-pilot will correct your angle most of the time so you can safely come to a stop, assuming you've got enough runway left!
Of course, the big thing here is that, as the title suggests, it's in the middle of the night... So no need to render any complex buildings or anything that requires fancy 3D, just let the lights guide your way! This is such a clever way of doing it (as pointed out by BadoorSNK on Bluesky, Atari's Night Driver did a similar thing) and, while I don't like to dwell on nostalgia too much, it does remind me of late-night / early-morning car rides when going on holiday, nothing guiding us but the dim lights on the road... Something a little cosy about that, I suppose. Not a game for everyone- it's pretty straight-laced as far as arcade flight games go aside from the friendly radio chatter you get, and Top Landing would have a lot more variety the next year- but it's novel, there's not many arcade games like it, and technically this is the first 3D Arcade Archives game from Taito. I wasn't really expecting it, so hopefully we can see Top Landing and other 3D games from them in the series in the future!
Oh, and the cabinet? Incredible, superb, amazing, 10/10.