Game designer Sid Meier born Feb. 24, 1954

Legendary game designer Sid Meier was born February 24, 1954. After creating a run of popular flight simulators in the early and mid 1980s, he shifted to strategy games in the second half of the decade, creating some of the greatest strategy games of all time in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.

Early flight simulators

Sid Meier acquired an Atari 800 in 1981 while he was working developing software for cash registers. A coworker named Bill Stealey was also interested in video games, and the two of them founded Microprose in 1982 to market the games Meier had created. Meier coded platform games and a racing game, but his run of flight simulators, including Hellcat Ace, Spitfire Ace, Solo Flight, and F-15 Strike Eagle put Microprose on the map in the first half of the decade. Meier’s approach to simulations was to simulate the fun parts, and toss out the repetitive and less fun elements.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!

In 1987, Meier took a departure from flight simulators, creating a single-player open world game called Pirates!, where you captain a ship, sailing across the Caribbean, plundering settlements and other ships in search of fortune and fame. Marketed as Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Microprose first released it in May 1987 for the Commodore 64, then ported it to the Amstrad CPC, Apple II, and IBM PC later that year, to the Apple IIgs and PC-88 in 1988, Atari ST in 1989, Amiga in 1990, and Nintendo NES in 1991.

The game has no predetermined end. Recruiting crew members and fighting become more difficult as the character ages, eventually forcing the character into retirement. Upon retirement, the character becomes anything from a beggar to a King’s advisor, depending on his accomplishments.

One last flight sim

In 1988, Meier worked on F-19 Stealth Fighter, a DOS game based on the F-117 Stealth Fighter before it was unveiled to the public. It had numerous details of the stealth fighter wrong, including the name of the plane, and was based on educated guesses about the characteristics of the still-secret fighter jet. The game ended up being released on the same day the United States admitted the existence of the F-117A Nighthawk.

Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon

Meier followed it up with Railroad Tycoon in 1990, a turn-based strategy game where you play a railroad robber baron, laying track to connect towns, building and improving stations, and buying and scheduling trains. Along the way you can attempt to drive rival railroads out of business, invest in them, or even merge with them. Much like Pirates!, at the end of the game, the character becomes anything from a circus impresario to a newspaper editor, based on accomplishments running railroads.

Although we remember Railroad Tycoon and subsequent games as DOS titles, Railroad Tycoon and Civilization did receive very capable ports to the Atari ST and Amiga.

Sid Meier’s Civilization

1991 brought Sid Meier’s masterpiece, Civilization, a turn-based strategy game where you settle a plot of land to form a city with the goal of expanding it into a long-running civilization through diplomacy, technology, and war. Along the way you have to control city development, exploration, government, trade, research, and a military. You can build and control individual units that advance the exploration, conquest and settlement of the game’s world. You also must decide on a form of government and manage tax rates and scientific research priorities. The player’s civilization is in competition with up to six other computer-controlled civilizations. You can win the game violently by conquering the world, or peacefully by colonizing Alpha Centauri. Technically, you can play an infinite game by surviving until another civilization colonizes Alpha Centauri, but what’s the fun in that?

Meier followed up Civilization with Colonization, Gettysburg, Alpha Centauri, Antietem, and a flood of Civilization sequels. As the 1990s wore on, he wasn’t necessarily the main designer of every game that bore his name. Simply putting Meier’s name on a game helped ensure the game would sell.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.