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The Formative Years: 1984 to 1989
The legend of Sid Meier begins, appropriately enough, with a tall tale. Sid Meier and Bill Stealey were playing an arcade flight combat game, and Bill - a former military pilot - was amazed that Sid could consistently rack up higher scores. 
Solo Flight (1984)
Design: Sid Meier
Publisher: MicroProse
Genre: Arcade Flight
Difficulty: Easy
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After humbling Bill (and Stealey being humble about anything is your first clue that this is a fairy tale), Sid pointed out that the AI of the enemy arcade pilot was so predictable that he could easily figure out what it was going to do. Moreover, Sid said he could design a better one, so the story goes, in two weeks. Bill took Sid up on the bet by giving the engineer a job, the two men formed MicroProse, and their vision led them to fame and fortune.
Certainly this makes for a great story, and like most tall tales, it has a kernel of truth at its center. But it's been more than a little embellished over the years, and it leaves out some critical facts. Sid and Bill kept their day jobs for the first several months, making MicroProse one of many "garage operations" to appear in the budding computer industry in the '80s. It would be some time before the "Bill and Sid show" became the corporate giant known as MicroProse (and even longer before financial troubles forced MicroProse's merger with Spectrum HoloByte - but that's another story).
 | "It was still a time when a couple guys in a basement could…sell a product like that."
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Needless to say, Sid needed more than a couple of weeks to design the game. Looking back on it, Solo Flight seems primitive, but it was a step up from the pitiful AI common in arcade machines of the era. In that respect, Sid achieved his goal, and the lessons he learned here would serve him in good stead when he moved on to Hellcat Ace (another 1984 release) and later to real flight sims like 1988's F-19 Stealth Fighter.
Next: Silent Service 
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