Dream a little bigger: the legacy of Mike Singleton
In their infancy, games were small. Mostly this was due to necessity. Early computers lacked the memory and processor power to store lots of information or handle multiple inputs, so the pioneering developers tended to stick with what worked: single screens and simple movements.There were several who kicked at the fences, however, and forced their groaning hardware to accommodate ever larger ideas. Of those ingenious few, Mike Singleton stands out for the sheer scale of his ambition. Singleton died last week, succumbing to cancer at the age of 61. He leaves behind not just a catalogue of classic games, but a legacy of innovation and ambition that continues to inspire developers and gamers alike even today. If you’ve enjoyed an epic open world role-playing adventure in recent years, from Skyrim to Fallout, from Dragon Age to Fable, you’ve benefited from Singleton’s prodigious imagination.Back in the early 1980s, however, Singleton was an English teacher at Mill Lane High School, in Ellesmere Port, just north of Chester. Intrigued by the new microcomputers that were creeping into classrooms and homes, he began creating games in his spare time. Sending his efforts to Clive Sinclair, he was invited to create a game for the ZX-81.Read more…
