MicroProse

I don't normally struggle to pick three covers for the picture to the left. I prefer to choose games that mean a lot to me but sometimes I'll go for ones I know will be eye-catching. Yes Civilisation. Yes, UFO: Enemy Unknown. Yes RollerCoaster Tycoon. But what about Silent Service. What about Railroad Tycoon. What about Civilisation II. What about Transport Tycoon. Man, MicroProse released a lot of good games. Is it possible they are one of my favourite software houses and I never realised?

[Please be aware. This article quotes some archive sources which use slurs not acceptable today. Towards the end of the article there is mention of suicidal feelings]

1982. Sid Meier and Bill Stealey worked for a company called General Instrument. They bonded at a corporate shindig in Las Vagas and played an arcade game called Red Baron. Bill Stealey, who had military piloting experience, was surprised to be beaten by Sid Meier. Sid explained to Bill how he could play the game better because he understood how it worked and, more importantly, he could write a better one. Thus did the pair found MicroProse.

1982-1984: Not much happened.
1984: US Gold started releasing games by MicroProse in the UK.

Unit 24. Tipton Trading Estate, Bloomfield Road, Tipton, West Midlands, DY4 9AH

Bill Stealey spoke to THE RETROCOLLECTIVE in 2025 for an interview that is up on YouTube. He remembers selling games directly to Boots before Geoff Brown called him up and made him a better offer.

I'm not 100% sure which was the first MicroProse title to make it on to shop shelves. It might well be Solo Flight which was being reviewed around the middle of 1984 with versions for the Commodore 64 and Atari. By October 1984 US Gold was running adverts showing four MicroProse games for sale; NATO Commander and Spitfire Ace for the Apple and C64, and F-15 Strike Eagle and Solo Flight for the Atari, C64, and Spectrum. Actually, Solo Flight never made it to the Spectrum and F-15 Strike Eagle wouldn't appear for a couple of years.

It's not easy to nail down what MicroProse games were released by US Gold. I don't think they released any in 1985 but there was another wave in 1986; Silent Service was definitely one of them, as was Solo Flight: 2nd Edition the manual of which includes a fantastic photo of Major Stealey in his full fighter pilot getup. There's also Acro Jet, the Spectrum and Amstrad versions of which were the first US Gold/MicroProse releases on those formats.

It gets harder to tell which games were released by US Gold for a couple of reasons. The most significant is that MicroProse went their own way in 1987 and set up a UK branch who re-released a lot of the games first released by US Gold. Secondly, for the 1986 releases US Gold really dialed back on their own branding. You can scan the marketing and packaging of Silent Service and the only clue the game was released by US Gold is a small logo on one of the adverts and a tiny note at the bottom of the instructions:

Manufactured in the U.K. under licence from MicroProse by

U.S. Gold Limited, Unit 2 /3 , Holford Way, Holford, Birmingham

B6 7AX.

Did US Gold reduce its branding to try and encourage American companies to stay with them or was it just cheaper to import and modify the pre-existing adverts and packaging as little as possible? I don't know but the upshot is, there are multiple versions of the same games floating around and its really hard to tell if you are looking at an original MicroProse release from America or the UK, or a US Gold release, or a MicroProse UK re-release of a US Gold game. At one point I thought I'd found a clever solution. US Gold had a budget label called Kixx which re-released a lot of its old full price games. I scanned the list thinking it would be easy to pick out the US Gold/Microprose titles only to realise the Kixx range includes two MicroProse games that were definitely not part of the earlier US Gold range; Airbourne Ranger and F-15 Strike Eagle. I guess that goes to show the relationship between MicroProse and US Gold stayed cordial even after the split. Although ironically, the split appears to have been caused by a bit of unfortunate boasting on Geoff Brown's part, as Bill Stealey told THE RETROCOLLECTIVE:

"A year later I'm over there and he says 'Bill come see what you brought me'. I go outside. he's got a new Ferrari. He says my games brought that for him. I'm going [expletive deleted] I'm still driving a Chevrolet. I'm going 'I guess I should have my own company over here'."   

It's a great interview and well worth watching. Bill Stealey is a funny and engaging and charismatic speaker. You can see why he was a great salesman and just occasionally you see a hint of the steel that must also have made him a fearsome negotiator. 

"Ubisoft were a distributor of ours, in fact their first successes came distributing MicroProse products. So we were making 7% they were making 93%".

MicroProse's time with US Gold covered that companies growth and expansion and in the period from 1984 to 1986 US Gold moved between three addresses. 1984; Unit 24. Tipton Trading Estate. Then in 1985, Unit 10 Parkway Industrial Centre, Heneage Street, Birmingham. Finally the Unit 2 /3 , Holford Way address from the 1986 Silent Service instructions. These are what those three different addresses look like today (well today-ish, some of these photos are now a few years old).

December 2023

July 2024

September 2023

The MicroProse records are still live on Companies House (although very incomplete) and they show MicroProse Sofware Ltd was renamed from an off the shelf company called Micklemere Ltd in July 1986. In October 1986 the company, which still hadn't opened, was advertising for an accountant (GLOUCSTERSHIRE ECHO, 09 October 1986 page 55) with a note:

This is an exceptional opportunity for a bright career minded individual to make their mark within a fast moving Company, shortly to open their European offices in Cirencester. 

In the end it wasn't Cirencester but a difference Gloucestershire town 10 miles away.

2 Market Place, Tetbury, Gloucestershire, GL8 8DA

From MICRO PROSE who have recently been let off the US GOLD leash, comes Gunship, a strategic helicopter simulation and F-15 Strike Eagle an air combat game.

That's how CRASH broke the news in May 1987 that MicroProse were going it alone. I think Gunship was the first game released under the MicroProse name in the UK. Over at the COMPUTER GAMING WORLD museum they have a copy of the November 1987 issue which includes a profile of MicroProse with comments from Bill Stealey and Sid Meier. The CGW profile talks about the newly opened UK branch and gets Bill Stealey's views on overseas software markets.

Microprose has recently opened a London office (now staffed with 30 personnel), as well as a Paris branch. Overseas sales account for 10% of total revenues....

The largest difficulty in marketing overseas is the nature of the software market. The European pattern has been to market inexpensive arcade-type products with a shelf life of 2-3 weeks. Microprose products have a much longer shelf life. For example, F-15 is posting its largest sales in 1987, four years after its initial release. Products are cheaper (c. 15%) due to ad rates and cost of living, but Microprose has recently adjusted its pricing structure to reflect equivalent prices in this country and abroad.

While Bill Stealey notes the potential of the overseas market, he also remarks on the cyclical sales trends. In the United States, the trend was from arcade to adventure to simulations; Europe has gone from arcade to simulations, while Japan has gone from arcade to adventure. When queried as to the viability of foreign markets, Bill characterized them as follow:

(1) Great Britain: possesses a large user-installed base. Spectrum, C-64 and Amstrad account for 84% of the market. Heavy cassette utilization (e.g. of 100,000 Gunship sales, 80% have been on cassette) is still the primary format.

(2) Germany: mainly C-64, Atari ST and Amstrad

(3) France: mainly Amstrad and Atari ST

(4) Japan: recently, Microprose signed a distribution agreement with Systemsoft. Even though Lode Runner sold thousands of copies in Japan, it required 34 conversions! There is simply no common machine and this aspect, coupled with the difficulty of cracking the tight Japanese distribution channels mean that entry into this market is in the initial stages at present.

The comment about a London office sent me down a blind alley because along with the original suggestion the office could be based in Cirencester, it made me wonder if I'd missed an address. The answer to that is no, as far as I can tell, although corrections are welcome. I think that's just the CGW journalist assuming anywhere in the UK is London.

CRASH printed a profile of MicroProse in the June 1988 issue. Their unnamed reporter took a picture of the building as it looked at the time.

CRASH

June 1988 page 30

May 2026

As you can see, not much changes in Tetbury. It's a charming town in the Cotswolds. I was passing through with a friend as part of a road trip which would take in the offices of several old software houses and some Doctor Who filming locations [1]. I went in search of the old MicroProse offices and lured my friend along with the promise there would be coffee and cake at some point. These days, 2 Market Place is a shop for the Cotswolds Dogs & Cats home and we went in for a quick browse. They had a fine selection of science fiction books, and a surprisingly large amount of Emmerdale Farm books if that sort of thing is your bag. If I'd had any sense of planning or forethought, I would have taken some pictures inside. But I didn't. I'm not used to being able to get in to the buildings I write about. It's big and goes back along way. And that's my exclusive journalistic insight. CRASH described it thus:

Nestling in the centre of this historic market town, MicroProse UK looks decidedly out of place; a red banner of foot-high letters across the large glass frontage emphasises the contrast. 

In addition to UK operations, 40% of their world wide transactions are controlled from here. The site includes a playtesting section, a comprehensive computer-controlled telesales department and a 20,000 square foot warehouse to back up their distribution service, which shifted over a million units last year.

Why Tetbury? It's a very nice town but it's not really close to anything. I might have expected a big American company to follow the example set by Commodore, Atari, Electronic Arts, or Activision and set up shop somewhere along the Slough/Reading axis. It turns out to have been the influence of managing director Stewart Bell, according to AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER. Who in April 1987 asked exactly the same question I did in 2026:

What, I wanted to know, was a big American software house doing setting up shop in the slow and somewhat pokey little Cotswold town of Tetbury?... The reason is simply that the right premises were available, at the right price, perhaps half what it would have cost to set up in some stark and anonymous industrial estate. This is an important factor to a new company, just starting up; having to watch the costs until turnover is established and the money starts rolling in. And besides, Stewart Bell, the managing director, lives just, down the road and didn't fancy moving.

Bill Stealey told THE RETROCOLLECTIVE:

"[Stewart Bell] said 'well I've got the perfect place for our office'. I said 'where's that?' He said 'the software distribution capital of Europe.' I'm going 'yay' and I find out it's Tetbury, England. And why was it Tetbury? ... I said I thought you said it was software distribution capital of the world. He goes 'well it will be.'!"

It would. RETRO GAMER 57 estimated that 40% of MicroProse worldwide transactions were controlled from Tetbury. MicroProse changed their postal address in May 1989, moving just under a mile to the outskirts of town. ACE visited Tetbury just before the move and printed a few photos from inside 2 Market Place in the May 1989 issue.

The UK press seemed suspicious of MicroProse in its early days. Maybe it all started to go wrong with the official company launch at the American embassy. It had been the scene of a memorable anti-Vietnam war riot in 1968 and the flat-rooved modernist building (complete with a 35 foot gilded aluminum aluminium bald eagle glowering down from the top) seemed to give flashbacks to some hacks.

CRASH sent roving columnist John Minson along for his Fear & Loathing column in the June 1987 issue. The results were predictabley hyperbolic:

But let’s start our weirdness at the American Embassy. I’ve only visited this imposing bunkhouse once before, and that was to obtain a visa. That time the marines all but strip-searched me before letting me into the building.
This time I wasn’t taking any chances. The night before I lawn-mowered my hair, giving myself the sort of cut that only a GI could love. Then I donned mirror shades, a Hawaiian shirt, and a ‘Vote For Nixon’ badge to show that I wasn’t one of those commie pinkos who’d kick a president just because he was a bigger bugger than most.
As I approached the building I felt a strong desire to start chanting ‘Hell no, we won’t go’, and burn my draft card — sorry invite — but Microprose had made it quite clear that there was no admission without that square of card, so I bit on the bullet.
Having run the gauntlet of metal detectors and sworn that I have never been a communist or related to Gadaffi, I was allowed into the reception. And who was the first person I saw? If it wasn’t my old (and I use the word advisedly) nemesis, Kremlin, a well known Commie(dore 64 user).
Didn’t this make a mockery of all that stringent security? Not at all. From the number of journalists nobody had ever seen before, all of whom had matching crew cuts and wore matching, light-weight grey suits (with equally matching bulges under their left armpits), I guessed that they’d got everything under control.
Yes, it seems that even the CIA loves Microprose programs, unlike the German government. That noble institution has put restrictions on titles such as the submarine simulation Silent Service, in case the militaristic aspects corrupt their youth. I can just see a teenage gang cruising down the Bonn high street in a submarine, torpedoing old women and children.
Of course Microprose isn’t warmongering. But Microprose is Major ‘Wild Bill’ Stealey, Fighter Pilot Supreme and Chief Advisor, Joint Chiefs of Staff, as his ‘Wild Bill card’ proudly proclaims. And what do you expect of a pedigree like that — a lesson in lying down and letting the commies march all over us? No siree! You can almost hear the sneer when the Microprose promo video turns from the joys of trashing the towel heads in F-15 Strike Eagle to the likes of Solo Flight, a pacifist prop plane for mummy’s boys who like to play with themselves. By the time we’d reached Conflict in Vietnam I was so keyed up that I was ready to enrol and nook those gooks.
But an army marches on its stomach, and I can highly recommend the American Embassy any time you’re feeling peckish. Burgers, hot dogs, ribs, and great pecan pie, plus Bud to guzzle of course. Beats MacDonalds any day.
After my visit to the helm of the aircraft carrier USS Great Britain, the Rock Garden was something of a step down...

Over the top? Yes. Deliberately overblown? Of course. That was John Minson's job description for the Fear & Loathing column but his comment about "visiting the helm of the aircraft carrier USS Great Britain" sums up a lot of contemporary attitudes about the increasing influence of American culture [2]  and politics on eighties Britain. MicroProse was not shy about using missions based on current and controversial events to add flavour to their games. What they saw as adding a contemporary edge played differently on the east side of the Atlantic. The result was a lot of press coverage with undercurrents hinting the company was a soft-power extension of the Regan administration and Bill Stealey (who seems to have deliberately played up his Fighter Jock image) was a real life version of Slim Picken's character in Dr. Strangelove. 

F-15 Strike Eagle manual

Exhibit A for the prosecution. The F-15 Strike Eagle manual which included at the start a picture of Bill Stealey gazing out at the reader from the cockpit of an F-15 with Wild Bill written on his flight helmet. Under the picture his job titles were written in presumably decreasing order of importance: 

Major BILL STEALEY,

Fighter Pilot

President,

MicroProse Software

The previous page included this bombastic quote from Major Bill:

Dedicated to the men and women who build, maintain, and fly one of the world’s greatest aircraft at McDonnell Douglas and in the U.S. Air Force.

Remember the next time you hear a fighter jet go by — You are hearing the "Sound of Freedom ."

YOUR SINCLAIR was not impressed. They wrote that the game included:

Lots of tasteful missions from a chance to relive the Vietnam War to a remarkably diplomatic attack on Colonel Gaddafi's tent. You've played games set after a nuclear holocaust — now's your chance to start one.

Also not impressed, The West German government's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften). As mentioned by John Minson, they Indexed submarine simulator Silent Service in 1987. This meant the game was judged unsuitable for children and added to an official list in a process called Indizierung (indexing). Anything Indexed was subject to strict limits on sales and advertising. It was illegal to sell or make any indexed games available to minors. It was illegal to advertise them. It was illegal to put them on shop shelves. It was illegal to print reviews in gaming magazines. Indexed games effectively disappeared although they could still be brought by anyone over the age of 18 from shops which only admitted adults; sex shops.

Silent Service was one of four MicroProse games added to the index, the other three being F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship, and Airbourne Ranger. All four were removed by 1989 after MicroProse appealed. The original indexing documents are online and can be downloaded and read. Once translated they make for fascinating reading. Silent Service was indexed because it is a simulation of the tactics and resource management used by a submarine commander. The report literally states:

It is considered, as a simulation game with various variables influenced by the player, to be significantly more complex than the usual 'shoot-'em-up and action games.' Furthermore, time has been included in this game as a new psychological factor.

Whereas in previous games the rule was that as soon as the program started, the act of war began immediately, in this game the 'aggressor' first has to direct their submarine close to the opposing fleet. This can easily take up to fifteen minutes. To be able to play this game 'meaningfully' at all, the player has to sink enemy supply ships or troop transports. The fact that in this game, ships that humans use as a means of transport are turned into trouble-free targets, whose destruction earns points, trivializes and downplays the reality of naval warfare.

The report goes on:

The game forces the player into an automated "command and obedience relationship" in which the performance of obedience is taken for granted. The annihilation of the enemy appears in "Silent Service" as a self-evident means of resolving war situations. From this perspective imposed by the game "Silent Service" war violence must be perceived as a justified means. 

I understand why the West German government would be hyper-sensitive to games which they saw as creating a following orders mentality and justifying war. However, their argument veers close to the same nonsensical reasoning that puts green blood in videogames on the grounds it is better than red blood. My reading of the report suggests it would have considered Silent Service acceptable for sale if all references to the Pacific War were removed and the Japanese ships and American submarines were replaced with vessels belonging to blue and red teams. That really would trivialize and downplay the reality of naval warfare. 

YOUR SINCLAIR were equally jaded about Gunship, saying it allowed the player to  "experience the joys of some real serious Commie-bashing". Gunship was also the subject of a letter writer to CRASH in May 1988:

I wondered how many young people happily playing Gunship realise that the US involvement in Central America has been condemned as illegal by the world court at the Hague, and President Reagan’s Contra arms deal contravenes not only several American laws, but the constitution of the United States itself.

‘So what?’ some of you may say. ‘It’s only a game.’ But the point is that it’s NOT a game. This is an accurate simulation based on a real incident which is still going on today.

Thousands of innocent people have been killed in Central America now because of terrorist action sponsored by the US Government.

Is it right to allow a computer ‘game’ to broadcast a subliminal message via a leisure medium? Such things are banned on British television.

At the time, I rolled my eyes at what I saw as the Rik-from-the-Young-Ones politics on display. I was very much of the keep politics out of gaming school in 1988 and I agreed flat out with the short reply from CRASH's letter editor Lloyd Mangram:

The fact that the US Army shouldn't be in South America is beside the point they are, and this simulation is, as you say, "real".

Unfortunately for MicroProse the Spectrum version of the game was released at a point when the Iran–Contra affair was just about to crack wide open and the whole Central American section of Gunship looked very iffy for a while. And so it goes on. It's not difficult to find magazines gazing askance at the geopolitics of the early MicroProse games. CRASH gave their Airbourne Ranger review the sub-heading "invade countries even smaller than Grenada". It's worth noting that no one made these comments about Activision or Electronic Arts so it's not just bog standard anti-Americanism on display. Something about the way MicroProse presented itself got up people's noses.

As late as 1989, THE GUARDIAN (08 June 1989 page 29) somehow managed to work the following sentence into an article about MicroProse's unlikely tie-in game with Greenpeace[3]:

Most companies feel that it is alright to produce simulations of, say, Roman armies laying waste to the tribes of ancient Britain, but something like an IRA simulator would be in bad taste. Not MicroProse.

This provoked an angry rebuttal from Peter Jones of MicroProse to THE GUARDIAN (15 June 1989 page 25). He described the article as seriously misrepresenting MicroProse and Greenpeace, and said the link by inference between MicroProse and an IRA simulator was totally repugnant. 

Still, it wasn't all politics. In August 1987, MicroProse UK got into a spat with Cascade over their game Pirates of the Barbary Coast. POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY reported:

The affair began last month, when Microprose sought an injunction over the packaging of Cascade's Pirates of the Barbary Coast, and claimed it was too similar to the packaging for its recently-released Pirates.

"We do not think there's any confusion about the game,” said Microprose UK head Stewart Bell last week. "Our concern is purely about the logo on the boxes.

Cascade's response from marketing director Peter Lewis was bullish in the extreme:

Last week, Lewis commented, "Microprose are a very powerful American company who are trying to use heavy handed methods to stop us selling our game," he said.

"Ours was out first, and in any case the packaging isn't similar. We have used Letraset which happens to be similar and the copyright for that rests with Letraset, not Microprose or anybody else.

Lewis added that to date Cascade has received no direct notice of any legal action over the affair.

Where's the injunction, Microprose? All we've had so far is various threatening letters from their solicitors, it's a big bluff, and they know they haven't got a leg to stand on. They tried to frighten us, and it hasn't worked," he said.

Lewis made it clear that if and when the matter reached court, Cascade would fight to retain its packaging, and would be considering “other things we could do" in the meantime."

Working on the assumption that revenge is a dish best served cold, Cascade held fire until October and the Personal Computer World Show. They went to the MicroProse stand and served writ on for damages to their reputation, seeking substantial compensation. Sadly the outcome to the writ is not recorded.

Unit I Hampton Road Industrial Estate. Tetbury, Glos. GL8 8LD

Going back to that May 1989 ACE article. The magazine also printed a picture of the MicroProse warehouse "just up the road from their plush offices". Now that kind of matches the location of the industrial unit on the Hampton Road estate. Could this be a photo of the inside of the unit which would become the new MicroProse office?

The only way to tell for sure is to go there and have a look.

May 2026

Yeah... Look. I'm sorry. The building we should be viewing is the one more or less in the middle left of the picture with the colourful circular IND logo. It's now a place called IND Plumbing and Heating. I owe an explanation for what is officially the worst photo I've posted on this blog. One, it was Monday afternoon so everyone was at work and the all the businesses on the estate were open. Two, there is no parking anywhere nearby or on the estate unless you are using one of the businesses. I'd driven in and parked outside a vet's surgery so I felt I had limited time get a picture before someone asked what I was doing. Three, the large front doors of the warehouse were wide open and anyone inside would have been able to see me standing there taking a photo, and people seemed to be coming and going on a regular basis. None of this should have been a problem. I could have angled myself artfully to take a photo of the building from the forecourt, effectively using the side of the building to shield myself from anyone inside. However, there was also point five. Five, a bloke was sitting in his car parked right in front of the warehouse eating a sandwich. I couldn't wait for the bloke to finish, I didn't know how long he would take. I also didn't want to take a photo unless I got myself out of his line of sight so the photo up there represents the best picture I could take under the circumstances. The bloke eating his sandwich is blocked behind the body of the grey BMW in the foreground. I took the picture and walked back to my car. "Did you get it," asked my friend and I wordlessly showed him. "Ooh, that's terrible," he said. And he's not wrong.   

Is that the same warehouse which featured in ACE's picture? I dunno. The roof kind of looks the same.

1989 was a year of change for MicroProse Ltd. They brought Telecomsoft from British Telecom and became the owner of the Firebird, Silverbird, and Rainbird labels. At more or less the same time, MicroProse started marketing 16-bit titles from Incentive Software, and also launched two new labels. One called MicroStatus, the other called MicroStyle. This flurry of activity is covered in a single ACE report, in issue 21, June 1989.

Suddenly MicroProse owned five labels. It's own original brand along with MicroStatus, for brainy games by other developers, like Incentive with Total Eclipse and Dark Side. MicroStyle was the same but for more arcade-like games. And then there was Firebird and Rainbird, I don't know what happened to the budget Silverbird line. It just seems to disappear. This is plainly too many labels for one company. Firebird, MicroStatus, and MicroStyle were quickly wound down. Rainbird carried on until 1991, being used for games like Mike Singleton's two Midwinter games and Weird Dreams.

The initial MicroStyle and MicroStatus adverts are a thing to admire. The MicroStyle adverts lean towards a Levi's Jeans advert style, sexy with a hint of danger. The MicroStatus adverts have a floppy-haired Brideshead Revisited aesthetic. They are dead sophisticated, innit. Like the Gold Blend adverts.

THE ONE
July 1989 page 2

THE ONE

July 1989 page 22

AMIGA USER INTERNATIONAL

October 1989 page 11

And then suddenly, Stewart Bell resigned. AMIGA USER INTERNATIONAL covered the news in a very short story:

Stewart Bell, who built Microprose UK into one of the top companies in Europe, has abruptly resigned.

AUI learned of this news just as we went to press.

Bell has been the managing director of Microprose UK for the last three years and took them from a virtually unknown simulations company to an organisation with wide ranging products which as of this moment hold three places in both the 8-bit and 16-bit Gallup charts. Recently, he engineered the Microprose takeover of Telecomsoft, one of the UK's leading software companies with the Firebird and Rainbird labels.

The reasons for Bell's sudden departure are as yet unrevealed and Microprose refuse to comment. Watch this space for further details

Further details were not forthcoming. The resignation comes so soon after the Telecomsoft deal, I wonder if the two were related. MicroProse hadn't previously gone in for these big corporate manoeuvres. In July 1989, COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL published a report about the Telecomsoft acquisition, complete with approving quotes from Bill Stealey.

"This is, by far, the biggest deal in Microprose history..." Microprose president Bill Stealey said. “The addition to Telecomsoft from British Telecom will double the size of Microprose Europe, making it the second or third biggest entertainment software publisher in Europe, it also has the potential to increase the growth of Microprose U.S.A. by 40% — and that's over and above the normal growth rate we've projected for this year.”

Bill Stealey sounds pretty happy but talking later to THE RETROCOLLECTIVE he says something which makes me wonder if he was putting a gloss on events in 1989 and putting a PR face on a deal presented to him as something which had already happened: 

"I end up firing Stewart because he, he... he was a good salesman but he couldn't handle money and he thought all our money was his money.

There's more discussion on THE RETROCOLLECTIVE podcast but it's discussed in a very conversational style which does not transcribe well.

With Stewart Bell gone, MicroProse settled into a comfortable routine. Sid Meier continued writing games and Bill Stealey continued selling them; Railroad Tycoon in 1991 and Civilisation in 1992. Unfortunately behind the scenes all was not well with the American parent company. They had tried to diversify into making arcade games as part of a plan by Bill Stealey to turn MicroProse into a £100 million dollars a year company by the early nineties. Sid Meier did not like Bill Stealey's plan and sold out his half of the company, in a deal which stayed confidential for years.

Bill was adamant that the arcade market was poised to make a comeback, and I felt that it was a mistake. Over the course of several conversations, it became clear that neither one of us was going to convince the other, and it wasn't the sort of thing that could be compromised on. We couldn't make half an arcade game.

I didn't like this new direction for the company, but I also recognized that business decisions can't be made by committee. One person needed to be at the helm, and I still didn't want it to be me. Bill and I agreed that the best option was for him to buy out my half of the company, giving him the freedom to steer while protecting me from risky maneuvers. Outwardly nothing would change, and no one beyond the executive team would know about the arrangement for years to come. I still sat in the same chair, attended the same meetings, collaborated with the same folks. But on paper, I became an independent contractor, receiving payment and royalties only for the games I personally created.

That's Sid Meier writing in his memoir on the making of Civilization, in an extract published at pcgamesn.com. Civilization was in development from 1989 and released in 1991 which gives some idea of the timescale for the arcade machines.

Two games were released, F-15 Strike Eagle and Battle of the Solar System. Museum of the Game also has records of a third title, Super Tank Attack which was not released. JALECO acquired the MicroProse division and then scrapped the project. COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL said MicroProse had invested $30 million in the project.  Bill Stealey took MicroProse onto the US stock market with an IPO that raised enough money to pay the outstanding debts left by the failure of the arcade division. Things stabilised for the American parent company for a while but the wheels fell off in 1993. Once the company went public it had investors to keep happy and a news story in the BALTIMORE SUN, 13 March 1993 page 43, explains why they were not happy:

Investors also claimed that delays in deliveries to stores of promised games were hurting profits. Late last year, the company had said its most recent, "F-15 Strike Eagle III" wasn't shipped until Dec. 15 -too late to take advantage of the Christmas rush.
As a result of the delays, the company's earnings fell to $893,000 in the three months that ended Dec. 31, a 61 percent decline from the same quarter a year earlier.

For the nine months that ended Dec. 31, the company earned $771,000, down from $3.2 million the year before.

The stock price fell. Company president, Mark L. Barnett, stood down in February less than a year after he took up the role. The chief financial officer also resigned. The same BALTIMORE SUN report mentions there would be redundancies of about 10% to the company's 400 staff worldwide. Bill Stealey talked to the THE RETROCOLLECTIVE about seeking another company for a merger but a deal with General Electric fell through. Bill Stealey is frank about the effect this had on his mental health and how it nearly lead to him taking his own life in order to collect on a keyman insurance policy which would have provided money to keep MicroProse running. Another deal fell through in June and a week later the company accepted a proposal to merge with Spectrum Holobyte Inc.

MicroProse Inc. was going through an incredibly difficult and turbulent time but it doesn't seem to have impacted on the UK operations. MicroProse Ltd gives the impression of a growing company and was continuing to recruit and preparing for a change of location.

EVENING POST
12 January 1993 page 30

The Ridge, Chipping Sodbury, BS17 6AY

The move to Chipping Sodbury seems to have gone through by July 1993. Over in America, Bill Steeley stood down from the MicroProse board in the Autumn and this was when the chopper fell. The only magazine I've been able to find that covered the cuts is one called ST APPLICATIONS who describe what happened: 

In a cost cutting exercise designed to cut the workforce by around 30%, they have closed down two of their three UK offices and their entire French operation. The remaining UK office at Tetbury is to head the European division but even they have not come out of this unscathed, with the PR manager and several others having been made redundant.

Wikipedia say 40 staff were made redundant from Tetbury, and Psygnosis deliberately set up a Stroud office to attract them. It's probably true but it's a statement crying out for a [citation needed]. MicroProse Ltd had a satellite studio in Leeds, that closed. There was a second satellite studio, as mentioned above, but I haven't been able to find out where it was. Even as these cuts were taking place, the company was advertising for new staff in EDGE with an advert that noted:

We are currently undergoing a merger with Spectrum Holobyte, but already our corporate strategy is clear. With strong projects in the pipeline, and being part of an even larger company with financial backers in the corporate communications and film industries, the potential for increasing our market share across all entertainment software sectors is enormous . . . and already we are the market leader for the floppy sector.

Our direction as MicroProse Europe has shifted to a focus on the best-selling European platforms: A1200, CD32, SNES, Megadrive, and it is products for these machines for which we now require additional developers to join us. We are working on a number of conversions of U.S, PC products, but also on some original game concepts that are set to expand the MicroProse portfolio of products across many game genres.

May 2026

This is as close as I could get to The Ridge. On Google Maps you can see the road leads up the hill to a couple of buildings and a car park but there was no access for me. You get three results if you search for the postcode BS37 6AY on the website ukaerialphotos.com; that's the postcode of Heidelberg Materials UK the current occupier of the site. Two of the search results are for Hasbro Interactive which is a spoiler for what happens next. Clicking the Hasbro link takes you to an aerial photo centred on the lower building on the site, the L-shaped one. That means, The Ridge is the building you can see in this drone footage on the Heidelberg Materials website.

The period from 1994 to 2002  includes the release of UFO: Enemy Unknown, Civilisation II , RollerCoaster Tycoon and a lot of other great games. Spectrum Holobyte consolidated its operations under the MicroProse brand in 1996 and Hasbro Interactive brought the company in 1998. MicroProse was kept going as a studio in Chipping Sodbury and, more importantly, as a label. RollerCoaster Tycoon was still branded as a MicroProse game. Hasbro announced they were withdrawing from the software industry in 2000 and sold off all the intellectual properly they owned to Infogrames. Infogrames did what they always did and renamed MicroProse to Infogrames Chippenham. The last game released with a MicroProse logo on the front was Geoff Crammond's 2002 game Grand Prix 4. The Chipping Sodbury office was closed on September 2002.

MicroProse Leeds
46 The Calls, Leeds LS2 7EY

The Leeds satellite studio was originally Vektor Grafix, founded in Leeds in 1987. As you might expect, they did a lot of work with vector graphics, such as the ZX Spectrum version of Star Wars, before moving on to become general 3D specialists. MicroProse brought them in 1992. It was big enough news to be covered in the WASHINGTON POST.

Vector Grafix has developed the "B-17 Flying Fortress," a strategic World War II bomber simulation, which will be released by MicroProse this summer for International Business Machines Corp. personal computers and compatibles.

Bill Stealey, chairman and chief executive of Hunt Valley, Md.-based Microprose, said the acquisition would allow Microprose to reduce its development costs for the new game by eliminating royalties and give it access to another game being developed at Vector Grafix, tentatively titled "Air Glory."

Back in 2021, Jonathan Tomas, gave their address on Twitter as 46 The Calls, Leeds and posted a photo of the building.

"I Cheated Death ... with Major Bill"

I didn't, obviously, but a lot of UK hacks did. For a while, a standard part of MicroProse's PR was for Wild Bill to take terrified journalists aloft in a T-28 Trojan, military trainer aircraft. Brought by MicroProse in 1988 and named Miss MicroProse. Everybody who did this trip was given a T-shirt printed with the legend "I Cheated Death ... with Major Bill". Here for example is a photo of John Minson holding up the shirt, post Fear & Loathing and writing for C&VG.

C&VG
November 1988 page 83

While I was writing this article I assembled a collection of I-cheated-death articles and it seemed a shame not to link to them.

Misson MicroProse C&VG November 1988 page 82

On A Wing And A Prayer THE GAMES MACHINE November 1988 page 22

Airbourne Ranger AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER June 1989 page 66

Sims City ACE November 1990 page 108

An Interview With "Wild Bill" Stealey NEXT GENERATION September 1996 page 111

RUN
January 1989 back cover

It wasn't just journalists who got to fly with Major Bill. MicroProse ran a contest in 1988 giving three readers a chance to win a ride in Miss MicroProse. The results were printed in the November 1989 issue of RUN and to be honest, the competition advertised on the next page was much more up my street.

RUN
November 1989 page 23

Do you have an "I Cheated Death ... with Major Bill" shirt? Send a picture to whereweretheynow@gmail.com. Please leave a comment and/or follow me on Bluesky @shammountebank.bsky.social

[1] Because I am the COOLEST MAN IN THE WORLD!! If you must know they were East Hagbourne, the Oldbury on Severn nuclear power station (also featured in Blake's 7), and the Old Baal Clay Pit. We also went for a wander round Charlestown harbour and stumbled on a place where they filmed The Tripods. There was much rejoicing, from me. 
[2] Presented for your consideration, this Fry & Laurie sketch from 1990 about the increasing popularity of Trick or Treat in the UK although it cuts off the joke where the kids are thrown out of the window.

[3] Yes, really. Greenpeace. The game, Rainbow Warrior, it wasn't very good.