Mike Singleton

Mike Singleton
Mike Singleton in San Diego, California in 2005
Born	21 February 1951
Died	10 October 2012 (aged 61) Switzerland
Cause of death	Cancer
Occupation	Computer programmer
Employer	Cheshire Education Authority Postern Software PetSoft Beyond Software Melbourne House Rainbird Software Simon & Schuster Interactive Mirage Software Microprose
Known for	The Lords of Midnight Doomdark's Revenge Midwinter

Mike Singleton (21 February 1951 – 10 October 2012) was a British video game designer who wrote various well-regarded titles for the ZX Spectrum during the 1980s. His titles include The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark's Revenge, Dark Sceptre, War in Middle Earth and Midwinter. Before developing video games, Singleton was an English teacher in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England.

Singleton originally started programming in the late 1970s, and writing Computer Race, a horse racing game he designed for a betting shop on the Commodore PET. 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.

Singleton's association with PetSoft turned out to be short-lived, as PetSoft, who had been due to enter into a contract with Sinclair Research in Cambridge to write software for the new ZX80, lost out on the deal to Psion. Singleton contacted British inventor and entrepreneur Clive Sinclair and was asked to send his games along. He was then asked to visit the site in Cambridge, and invited to work on software for their brand new ZX81 micro.

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, having taken him just two weeks over the Christmas holidays to complete.