Midnight Resistance

Midnight Resistance
Japanese arcade flyer of Midnight Resistance.
Developer(s)	Data East
Publisher(s)	Data East (arcade, Mega Drive) Sega of America (Genesis) Ocean (home computer conversions)
Designer(s)	Koji Akibayashi
Composer(s)	Azusa Hara Tatsuya Kiuchi Hitomi Komatsu Hiroaki Yoshida Hitoshi Sakimoto (Genesis/Mega Drive conversion) Shōgo Sakai (Genesis/Mega Drive conversion)
Platform(s)	Arcade, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST
Release date(s)	1989 (arcade) 1991 (Mega Drive/Genesis)
Genre(s)	Run and gun
Mode(s)	Single player, Two players cooperative

Midnight Resistance (ミッドナイトレジスタンス, Middonaito Rejisutansu^?) is a side-scrolling action shooting game produced by Data East for the arcades in 1989. The game was later published by Data East to the Sega Mega Drive in 1991 and by Ocean Software to various home computer platforms around this time.

The game is set in a dystopian future where the player controls a member of a resistance movement who goes on a mission to rescue his kidnapped family from a drug kingpin.

In the arcade version, two nameless brothers are on a mission to rescue their family from an entity known as King Crimson.

In the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version, the main character is Johnny Ford who's a member of an operative group who shuts down drug cartels in South America. After completing his last mission, Johnny returned home only to find it in shambles, and he sees a note in which King Crimson kidnapped his entire family. The reason for the abduction is that Johnny's father, Malcolm Ford, was developing a serum which could help people break their addictions to all narcotics. Since the government is unable to help Johnny, he sets off on his own to rescue his family and destroy King Crimson's empire of evil for good.

Midnight Resistance features play mechanics and controls similar to that of the Contra series, and can be played by up to two players simultaneously (except Sega Mega Drive/Genesis). The main distinguishing feature is the inclusion of a rotatable joystick similar to the one used in Ikari Warriors, in addition to the traditional set of shoot and jump buttons, allowing the player to adjust his character's aim in one of eight directions by rotating the joystick clockwise or counter-clockwise. This allows the player to keep their aim in one direction while moving in another, even while crawling or jumping.