Konami's Midnight Run is a thoroughly mediocre racing game that adds nothing whatsoever to the genre. With a miniscule three tracks available and just four cars to choose from, you can only spend so long dealing with the game's simple yet frustrating control before abandoning it for good. Primitive graphics, irritating sound, and the lack of interesting collision effects round out the great big zero.
Graphically, Midnight Run seems entirely dated. The cars, the roads, everything is rough and suffers from considerable polygon dropout. The cars vibrate in what might be an attempt at realism, but ends up just looking like some sort of graphical error. The perpetual night sky (hence "Midnight" Run) gets old pretty darn quick, too. Thankfully, with all the onscreen cars (sometimes eight or nine at a time), the game never really suffers from graphical slowdown, but this comes as no surprise, since these graphics really don't seem to be taking up much of the CPU's time and energy.
Midnight Run also features some of the most uninteresting and unrealistic sound effects in recent memory. Sure, the engine sound approximates the sound of an engine. Sure, the cheesy Sammy Hagar-style guitar really gets the old testosterone ready to drive a car - hey, if it worked for USAF bombers in the real-life Gulf War, who am I to ask for anything more musical in a game soundtrack, right? But the bizarre, metallic collision sounds are absurd - they sound less like a car scraping metal or cement than like some guy getting slaphappy in the basement with the analog harmonizer. One stronger sonic element is Midnight Run's innovative "nagging girlfriend" feature, which has replaced most racers' repetitive sportscaster commentary with the more realistically repetitive commentary of some chick who presumably came along for the ride. As in real life, her high-pitched whine helps you keep your cool in times of stress.
To say that Midnight Run has arcade-style control is to grossly understate how simple it is. Really, only fans of the most stripped-down, bare-basics racing will appreciate this game. Small turns are instantaneous. The second you lay off the D-pad, you're immediately reoriented straight-ahead on the track. It feels more like just selecting lanes than actually turning. Longer, tighter turns are extremely hard to pull off. Hit detection is very loose and collisions are, well, they're just weird. Nine times out of ten, when you hit someone, you just sort of bounce a little and surge forward several car-lengths, and even on the hardest setting, you just lose about half your speed. If you really put your mind to it, after about an hour, you might be able to flip your car, but it's nearly impossible. No damage or pit stops or other sim-style elements are offered. If you're looking for exploding wreckage and wild spinout action, look elsewhere.
With just three tracks to offer, Midnight Run isn't long on replay value. Compared to the competition, like Formula 1 Championship Edition, with its more than a dozen tracks, this isn't much of an offering. Midnight Run does offer a choice of four (noncustomizable - you can select "tuned" or "normal") cars, but they all seem to handle pretty much the same. Surprisingly, the game is rather difficult, especially in the sheer number and size of the vehicles you must pass alone (there's plenty of semis). But, if difficulty is all a game has going for it, well, most people won't last 20 minutes.
Midnight Run is really nothing special. The last 12 months have yielded lots of great PlayStation racing games, from gritty, hyper-realistic simulations like Formula 1 CE, to addictive adrenaline-pumping immediate gratifiers like Jet Moto 2. With its consistent mediocrity on all fronts, there's certainly no reason to shell out the extra dollars for this Japanese import when there are so many better racers available domestically. Don't look for this hunk of junk to come out here - ever.
