MicroProse | Code Like It's 198x

MicroProse started with a bet in a Las Vegas arcade. Bill Stealey, a former US Air Force pilot, and Sid Meier, a programmer, were colleagues at General Instrument, and at a business meeting they played Atari’s coin-op Red Baron. Meier beat Stealey’s score by a wide margin and said he could write a better game. Stealey bet him he couldn’t, and promised to sell it if he did. A few months later Meier came back with Hellcat Ace, and the company was born. Over the next ten years MicroProse became the best-known name in combat flight simulation, then published three of the most influential strategy games of the period: Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon and Civilization.

Fast facts

Founded: 1982, in Maryland, by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier. The first advertisements came from Parkton; by 1984 the company was in Hunt Valley.
British arm: MicroProse Software Ltd, 2 Market Place, Tetbury, Gloucestershire, from the end of 1986. Its games had earlier come out in Britain through US Gold.
Simulations: F-15 Strike Eagle, Silent Service, Gunship, F-19 Stealth Fighter.
Strategy: Pirates! (1987), Railroad Tycoon (1990), Civilization (1991); as publisher, Master of Orion (1993) and X-COM (1994).
Owners: independent until 1993; then Spectrum HoloByte, which renamed itself MicroProse in 1997; Hasbro Interactive (1998); Infogrames (2001).
Closed: the last MicroProse studio, at Hunt Valley, in 2003.

A bet over Red Baron

Both founders told the story to Edge in 1997. “I met Bill at a business meeting in Las Vegas,” Meier said. “They had an arcade room and we played this old Red Baron game.” Stealey remembered the numbers: “The high score on the machine was something like 32,000 and I scored 35,000. Sid marched right past me with 62,000. As a pilot, that hurt my pride.” Stealey was not impressed by the first version of Hellcat Ace, and Meier took his suggestions “about things, like the bullets and the turn rate”. Then Stealey started selling it.

The company was nearly called something else. Computer Gaming World reported in 1989 that it “was almost called Smuggers Software (for Sid Meier Users Group Software)”. MicroProse’s first advertisement in Antic, in October 1982, offered three games for the Atari 8-bit computers from an address in Parkton, Maryland: Hellcat Ace, “a real time, three dimensional WWII flying simulation with a unique pilot’s eye view”, the helicopter game Chopper Rescue, and Floyd of the Jungle, “a fun game for up to four players”.

Simulations

The two founders split the work. Meier wrote and designed; Stealey, whom Computer Gaming World called a “super salesman”, ran the business and was the company’s public face. In October 1984 MicroProse, by then at Hunt Valley, advertised F-15 Strike Eagle: afterburners, radars, missiles, electronic countermeasures, and missions “from historic missions over Southeast Asia to today’s defense of the strategic oil routes through the Straits of Hormuz”. The submarine game Silent Service and the helicopter simulation Gunship followed. When ACE profiled the company in 1990, Gunship was its best-selling game across all versions.

Stealey made flying part of the brand. Computer Gaming World visited in 1989 and found that “everyone at Martin State Airport knows the brightly emblazoned T-28 named ‘Miss Microprose’”; the magazine’s editor-in-chief did his first aileron roll in it. The same year Stealey told Compute!’s Gazette that MicroProse was building its own arcade machine with 3D polygon graphics, because coin-op makers had only wanted to license games like Gunship “for ridiculously low fees”. The magazine called MicroProse, with F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship and F-19 Stealth Fighter behind it, “the preeminent developer of armed computer aviation”.

Sid Meier’s games

Meier’s own designs moved away from combat. Pirates! (1987), advertised in Britain as “the world’s first swashbuckling simulation”, sent the player raiding treasure ships on the Spanish Main, and cost £14.95 on the Commodore 64. Railroad Tycoon (1990) was about building a railway company, and Civilization (1991) invited players to “build an empire to stand the test of time”. MicroProse put Meier’s name at the front of the titles, as Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Sid Meier’s Civilization.

MicroProse also published other studios’ strategy games. Master of Orion (1993) was designed by Steve and Maria Barcia and Ken Burd of Simtex, and UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994), called X-COM: UFO Defense in America, came from Julian Gollop’s Mythos Games as a follow-up to Laser Squad.

MicroProse in Britain

British players first met MicroProse’s games on the US Gold label: ZZAP!64 reviewed them as “US Gold/Microprose” in 1985. According to ACE, MicroProse “was part of the US Gold stable until the end of 1986, when Microprose set up in the UK”. By February 1987 advertisements for the Commodore 64 Gunship asked for cheques payable to Microprose Software Limited, 2 Market Place, Tetbury, Gloucestershire.

The Tetbury office sold more than MicroProse’s own games. Its advertisements for Origin Systems’ Autoduel and Ogre in 1987 were signed “MicroProse Software Ltd. Origin Systems Inc. Joint venturers in Europe”, and in January 1988 the same address sold Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny at £19.95 for the Commodore 64 and £24.95 for the Apple II, with a box to tick “for more information on the Origin range”.

Stealey came over to help. In November 1987 ACE’s back-page photograph showed “Major ‘Wild’ Bill Stealy [sic] of Microprose” cutting a cake to celebrate the British company. The champagne, the caption noted, had not been opened, and the magazine suspected him “of keeping a firm hold on company expenditure”. In May 1988 the magazine reported that journalists “invited to share the pleasures of the high life with Major ‘Wild Bill’ Stealey of Microprose came in for a little more than they bargained for”: its co-editor went up in a plane with “the American air-ace”, finishing with a sharp pull-up, and did well, the magazine said, to hold on to his breakfast.

In 1989 MicroProse’s British arm bought Telecomsoft, British Telecom’s games business, with its labels Firebird, Rainbird and Silverbird. Computer Gaming World dated the purchase to May 1989. MicroProse’s UK managing director, Stuart Bell, told ACE he was “totally confident” that Firebird and Rainbird would continue, and Rainbird was still publishing under MicroProse in 1992; the Telecomsoft and Rainbird entries tell that story. ACE’s 1990 profile summed the year up as “huge upheavals”: the Telecomsoft purchase, then the departure of Bell and of the Origin label shortly afterwards. MicroProse UK then had 55 staff.

Spectrum HoloByte

In June 1988 ACE asked Phil Adam, president of Spectrum HoloByte, the Californian publisher of the flight simulation Falcon, what networked games might one day allow. Adam wanted to “be able to go up against one of Bill’s (Wild Bill Stealey, of Microprose) products”. ACE added: “Now there’s an interesting idea: Falcon versus F-15 Strike Eagle.”

Five years later the two companies were one. In the summer of 1993 Spectrum HoloByte took over MicroProse in a share-swap merger. Computer Gaming World reported that Spectrum could end up holding up to 60% of MicroProse’s stock and had “essentially, become the second-largest disk-based entertainment software publisher”. The One described it as “a minnow swallowing a whale”, and quoted MicroProse UK’s marketing director, Rob Davies: HoloByte had “very few products but a lot of money in the bank, while we are in a completely different situation”. Stealey stood down as chairman. He left the company and went on to found another publisher, Interactive Magic.

Changing hands

The later 1990s were hard. In 1996 Computer Gaming World reported that MicroProse had laid off nearly half its staff that summer and had to seek foreign investment to stay listed on the NASDAQ; its chief executive, Stephen Race, said the company had “negative tangible net worth”. In the same news story Sid Meier left the company he had co-founded, taking the designer Brian Reynolds and Jeff Briggs with him to start Firaxis.

In 1997 Spectrum HoloByte renamed itself after its better-known subsidiary, and within a week GT Interactive announced it would buy MicroProse. Edge reported the deal as done in its next issue, then in February 1998 reported that it had collapsed; MicroProse’s chief executive said it had cost “at least a quarter’s worth of slippage” in its plans. Later in 1998 Hasbro Interactive bought MicroProse for $70 million. Computer Gaming World noted that it had lost $65 million over the previous three years. In December 1999 Hasbro closed two of MicroProse’s four studios, at Chapel Hill and Alameda, cancelling a new X-COM game and further work on Falcon 4.0, and promised that the brand would continue at Hunt Valley.

At the end of 2000 Infogrames agreed to buy Hasbro Interactive for $100 million, mostly in its own shares, and with it MicroProse and Civilization. According to later public accounts, the British studio at Chipping Sodbury closed in 2002, and in November 2003 Atari, as Infogrames had become, closed the Hunt Valley studio, the last one still working under the MicroProse name.

The name afterwards

The name outlived the company. Atari sold it in 2007 to the Interactive Game Group, which merged with the airsoft-gun maker Cybergun in 2010. David Lagettie bought the name from Cybergun, and in 2019 a new MicroProse relaunched it as a publisher of combat and simulation games.

Sources

Antic vol. 1 no. 4, October 1982: MicroProse Software advertisement (Parkton, Maryland; Hellcat Ace, Chopper Rescue, Floyd of the Jungle).
ANALOG Computing issue 23, October 1984: F-15 Strike Eagle advertisement (MicroProse Software, Hunt Valley).
ZZAP!64 issue 5, September 1985, and issue 7, November 1985: reviews credited to “US Gold/Microprose”.
ZZAP!64 issue 22, February 1987, pp. 63–64: Gunship advertisement (Microprose Software Limited, Tetbury).
ZZAP!64 issue 30, October 1987: Pirates! advertisement (“the world’s first swashbuckling simulation”) and price, £14.95.
ACE issue 50, November 1991: Civilization advertisement.
ZZAP!64 issue 31, November 1987: Autoduel and Ogre advertisement (“Joint venturers in Europe”). Issue 33, January 1988: Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny advertisement.
ACE issue 2, November 1987: “The Blitter End” (Stealey and the cake).
ACE issue 8, May 1988: “Up, up and away” (the journalists’ flight).
ACE issue 9, June 1988, p. 35: Phil Adam of Spectrum HoloByte.
Computer Gaming World issue 60, June 1989, p. 49: “Smuggers Software”, Stealey and Meier, the Red Baron meeting, “Miss Microprose”.
Compute!’s Gazette, August 1989, p. 13: “MicroProse: Flying the Other Way” (Stealey on Red Baron and the arcade machine).
ACE issue 22, July 1989: MicroProse’s purchase of Telecomsoft; Stuart Bell.
Computer Gaming World issue 63, September 1989: “Microprose Acquires British Telecomsoft”.
ACE issue 30, March 1990, p. 74: company profile (founded 1982 and 1986; Stealey and Meier; US Gold; Gunship; the 1989 upheavals; 55 staff).
Computer Gaming World issue 110, September 1993: Master of Orion and Simtex; “CGW Visits Spectrum HoloByte Prior To The Merger”.
The One issue 59, August 1993: “HoloByte eat MicroProse” (the merger; Rob Davies; Stealey standing down).
Amiga Format issue 59, May 1994: UFO: Enemy Unknown and Mythos Games.
Computer Gaming World issue 145, August 1996: Meier, Reynolds and Briggs leave to form Firaxis; MicroProse’s layoffs and finances.
Edge issue 43, March 1997: “Was Microprose really started on a bet?” (Meier and Stealey; Hellcat Ace; Stealey at Interactive Magic).
Edge issue 52, December 1997: GT Interactive’s deal; Spectrum HoloByte renamed MicroProse. Issue 55, February 1998: “MicroProse/GT deal collapses”.
Edge issue 75, September 1999: Stealey, “an accountant and an airforce pilot”, met Meier at General Instruments.
Computer Gaming World issue 172, November 1998: “Hasbro Interactive Snaps Up MicroProse and Avalon Hill” ($70 million; $65 million lost).
Computer Gaming World issue 187, February 2000: “Bad Day at Microprose” (the December 1999 closures).
Computer Gaming World issue 199, February 2001: Infogrames buys Hasbro Interactive.
“MicroProse”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the closures of Chipping Sodbury (2002) and Hunt Valley (2003); the sale of the name in 2007, Cybergun (2010) and the 2019 revival. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse