Mike Singleton

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Mike Singleton
Microprose
Known forThe Lords of Midnight
Doomdark's Revenge
Midwinter

Mike Singleton (21 February 1951 – 10 October 2012) was a British

War in Middle Earth and Midwinter. Before developing video games, Singleton was an English teacher in Ellesmere Port
, Cheshire, England.

Early work

Singleton was originally a teacher[2] and started programming in the late 1970s, and writing Computer Race, a horse racing game he designed for a betting shop on the Commodore PET.[3] Moving on from this, he began working on arcade games for the Pet, working with PetSoft, where he wrote Space Ace entirely in 6502 machine code. The game broke sales records of the day by selling three hundred copies.[4]

Singleton's association with PetSoft turned out to be short-lived, as PetSoft, who had been due to enter into a contract with

ZX81 micro.[3]

Singleton used this as the platform for his GamesPack1 project. GamesPack1 was a series of games, each fitting into just 1 kilobyte of memory. It was one of the first commercial software programs written for the ZX81, and something of a runaway success, selling a massive 90,000 copies, earning Singleton £6,000 for his efforts,[4] having taken him just two weeks over the Christmas holidays to complete.[3]

Golden age of the home microcomputer

Whilst the arcade game writing business was making him a living, Singleton, who retired from teaching completely in 1982 to become a full-time freelance

Computer and Video Games magazine (C&VG),[5] which eventually led to Beyond Software when C&VG editor Terry Pratt moved to run Beyond.[3]

In March 1984, Singleton's spy-themed board game, Treachery, which had its complicated game logic controlled by a computer program, was featured in C&VG, with a type-in listing for the Spectrum, together with a keyboard overlay (a common feature of his games), centre-spread board and a set of counters. The game was so popular among the readers that the editor asked for conversions for the Commodore 64 and BBC Micro to be produced, and each of them featured in C&VG's 1985 yearbook.

Having progressed to the ZX Spectrum, he wrote what are widely regarded as some of the best strategy adventure games ever to be seen on those early home microcomputers,

Lords of Midnight (released in July 1984) and Doomdark's Revenge, which were originally intended to form the first two episodes in a trilogy of which, the final episode, Eye of the Moon, never came about. Each of the two games played out on a scale never seen before back in the mid-eighties, at a time when many games were boasting 50 or even 100 locations, Lords of Midnight's groundbreaking gameplay featured over 4,000 locations, and Doomdark's Revenge, 6,000, plus well in excess of 100 player controllable characters. Had Eye of the Moon come to fruition, it was to have had around 24,000 locations, in a map featuring twelve distinct regions, each with a local sub-quest completely separate from the main objective of the game.[4]

Moving on from the Midnight series, Singleton worked on several games of a more arcade-like nature, the first of which, Throne of Fire,[6] a side viewed live action game, featured a multiplayer option where each player used the same computer to explore simultaneously, each trying to complete a set of objectives which lead to the overall completion of the game. Dark Sceptre,[6] released later the same year, was also in essence a sideways viewed live action game, but returned to a more adventure-like feel, with a long, drawn out challenge awaiting the player who would need to build up their forces to consolidate their position before seizing on the opportunity to actually complete the game.

Two years later,

War in Middle-earth,[6] whilst essentially an adventure game on a similar scale to the Midnight series, represented a switch from the adventure to an action philosophy, requiring the player to interact with the characters under their control directly, moving them individually in each of the battles,[4] giving the game much more of an arcade/adventure feel. The game was developed by Maelstrom Games, which had originally been created by Singleton to run the PBM version of Dark Sceptre.[4]

Later work

In the late 1980s, Singleton moved onto the

16-bit machines that were making an appearance, and worked on the classic Midwinter trilogy, also producing another work in the Lords of Midnight series in 1995, Lords of Midnight: The Citadel
.

In the 21st century, Singleton continued working in games design, making him one of a few developers to have made the transition to more modern consoles from the early days of home computing. Singleton worked for

Gauntlet series of games, and Race Driver: Grid, a racing game developed by Codemasters.[7] At the time of his death after suffering from cancer,[8] Singleton was working on an iPhone port of Lords of Midnight.[9]

Games

8-bit home computers

Title Distributor Year Platform
Space Ace PetSoft 1981 PET
GamesPack1 Sinclair Research Ltd 1981
ZX81
Shadowfax Postern 1982 BBC, C64/VIC-20, Spectrum
Siege Postern 1983 PET/C64/VIC-20, Spectrum
Snake Pit Postern 1983 C64/PET/VIC-20, Spectrum
3-Deep Space Postern 1983 C64/VIC-20, Spectrum
The Lords of Midnight Beyond Software 1984 Amstrad CPC, C64, Spectrum
Doomdark's Revenge Beyond 1985 Amstrad CPC, C64, Spectrum
Quake Minus One Beyond Software 1985 C64
Dark Sceptre Beyond Software 1986 Spectrum
Throne of Fire
Melbourne House
1987 Amstrad CPC, C64, Spectrum
War in Middle Earth
Melbourne House 1988 Spectrum
Star Trek: The Rebel Universe
Firebird Software
1988 C64

Later computers

Title Distributor Year Platform
Star Trek: The Rebel Universe Simon & Schuster Interactive 1987 Atari ST, PC
Space Cutter Melbourne House 1987 Amiga
War in Middle Earth Melbourne House 1988 Atari ST, Amiga, PC
Whirligig Firebird Software 1988 Atari ST, Amiga
Midwinter Rainbird Software 1989 Atari ST, Amiga, PC
Flames of Freedom MicroProse 1990 Atari ST, Amiga, PC
Grimblood Virgin Interactive 1990 Atari ST, Amiga
Ashes of Empire/Fallen Empire Mirage 1991 Amiga, PC
Starlord MicroProse 1993 Amiga, PC
Lords of Midnight: The Citadel
Domark
1995 PC
The Ring Cycle Psygnosis 1995 PC

Consoles

Title Distributor Year Platform
HSX: HyperSonic Xtreme Midas Interactive Entertainment 2002 PlayStation
Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb
LucasArts
2003
Mac, PC, PS2, Xbox
Wrath Unleashed LucasArts 2004 PS2, Xbox
Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
Midway Home Entertainment
2005 PS2, Xbox
Race Driver: Grid Codemasters 2008 PC, PS3, Xbox 360

References

  1. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    . Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  2. ^ Stuart, Keith (16 October 2012). "RIP Mike Singleton, the RPG visionary who revolutionised the genre". The Guardian.
  3. ^ a b c d "I BET TOLKIEN DID THE SAME". Crash. No. 14. March 1985.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "MAELSTROM IN A TEACUP". Crash. No. 41. June 1987.
  5. ^ a b "Chapter 4: Hit Squad". The 1985 Sinclair User Annual. Sinclair User. 1985. pp. 39–42.
  6. ^ a b c d "Planet Sinclair: The Sinclair Industry: Programmers: Mike Singleton". Nvg.ntnu.no. Retrieved 27 June 2016.
  7. ^ Singleton's profile at MobyGames
  8. ^ Stuart, Keith (16 October 2012), RIP Mike Singleton, the RPG visionary who revolutionised the genre, theguardian.com, retrieved 30 November 2019
  9. ^ Wild, Jon (16 October 2012). "Night has fallen..." Icemark.com.

External links