Draft:Michael J Mika

Michael J Mica is a leading figure in the video game industry, recognized as a prolific game developer, game journalist, and as an authority on video game history, retro gaming, and game emulation. He currently serves as the President of Digital Eclipse, which was acquired by Atari in 2023. Mika is credited for having worked on or contributed to more than 200 games on virtually every major game console released since the Game Boy.

Driven by passion for games: playing, making, and preservation and documenting an accurate history of the games industry. Mika has worked on hit franchises including Minecraft, Rockband, MediEvil, Street Fighter, Commando, 1942, Puzzle Fighter, Dragon's Lair, Rayman, NFL Blitz, and many more.

Early Life
Mika was born in Westland, Michigan, where he first started programming on his elementary school's Apple II computer.

While on several outings to a local K-Mart in his home town, Mika programmed a version of Moon Patrol on the store's display Commodore 64, which resulted in his father buying the computer for the family, even though they couldn't afford it. He sold his first computer game when he was 12 at the local computer store, called Soft-House. His first machine language game was made using a disk sector editor to reverse engineer diskette-based games before he realized what compilers were and why they existed. He created a markup language to allow graphics and animation on Bulletin Boards called MCI/DGS - a sort of HTML but in the 80s.

Education
Mika attended Wayne State University, starting as a film student but eventually graduated as an English major.

Career
Early Career

In 1994, after graduating from Wayne State University, Mika and his friends formed a company called Genetic Fantasia, and approached Atari to develop games on the Atari Jaguar. They bought kits, maxed out credit cards, worked on a version of Konami's Bomberman and then Atari effectively went out of business.

The first fully completed and published game that Mika created was a Game Boy game based on Yars' Revenge on a homemade development kit, and was motivated to do so after meeting Yars' Revenge creator, Howard Scott Warshaw, through a chance connection over the internet. It would eventually be published via Telegames and Vatical Entertainment.

NEXT Generation Magazine

Mika moved to California in 1998 where he became a journalist for games magazine Next Generation (US sister magazine to Edge) While there, he was interested in the preservation of games after discovering, though his journalism work, how poorly the industry was in retaining its history. He was reminded of a film school course that discussed films like Cleopatra being lost forever and wanted to engage in efforts to prevent the same for the games industry.

Digital Eclipse

While working at Next Generation Magazine, Mika, along with friends Bob Baffy and Jeff Frohwein, continued to develop unreleased game prototypes for several publishers, under their Genetic Fantasia company, when he and Bob Baffy were invited to join Digital Eclipse by CEO Andrew Ayre. Upon joining the company, Mika's first project was to launch Midway's Game Boy initiative starting with NFL Blitz for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Mika worked on many projects, including major hits like Tarzan for Activision (Over 1 million units sold), and worked on projects with the industry's biggest publishers including Midway, EA, Sega, Konami, GT Interactive, Atari, Namco, and Nintendo

Digital Eclipse eventually merged with Imagine Engine, formed Backbone Entertainment, then merged with a group of game developers to form Foundation 9. Under Backbone Entertainment, Mika and former Next Generation Magazine colleague, Chris Charla, co-created Death, Jr., marking his first foray into the business of comics, movies, and merchandising.

NGMoco

In 2008, Mika would leave Foundation 9 to help launch iPhone developer NGMoco with co-founders Neil Young and Bob Stevenson. Mika helped launch the company's first games Maze Finger, Dr. Awesome, and Topple.

Other Ocean

After 6 months with NGMoco, Mika re-grouped with Andrew Ayre to form Other Ocean Interactive, with the goal of getting back to console development and the business of game preservation. Mika was part of the reclamation of Digital Eclipse from the newly collapsed Foundation 9 and re-launched the group to create the "Criterion Collection" of video game products with help from Frank Cifaldi.

Mika migrated the Digital Eclipse brand to create and lead a new business unit that focuses on re-releases, re-masters, re-imaginings, and retro demakes. Mika also helped launch licensing and fundraising efforts to expand the studio to self-publishing and interactive documentaries.

Atari

Digital Eclipse was acquired by Atari in October, 2023.

Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition
In 2013, while playing the NES version of Donkey Kong with his daughter, she asked Mika if she could play as "The Girl" to save Mario instead. He said that it wasn't possible and she asked him why? So Mika went about hacking the game so that she could rescue Mario instead of the other way around. When she played a few days later, she was elated and Mika stated that,

"It’s eye-opening for me. I have always felt that there should be fairness in games, and a lot of the games I’ve worked on have never really been violent games or intentionally male focused, but now when I reflect on it, especially after this whole experience, it’s impossible to go forward without thinking about it now. And now having a daughter, she’s only three–but even with what we did here, I see the world through her eyes. When she’s upset about something, or when she disagrees with something I naturally do not think about those things, but now I am. It’s definitely changed the way I approach game making."

Other Media
Mika has worked on TV and movie properties, including as a story/consultant for Nickelodian's Glitch Techs and RoboBurger, the hit film Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds, and is featured in a number of documentaries, including Game Over, Power On: Story of XBox, Outerlands, Insert Coin, and more.

Industry Activities
Mika has been the subject or participant in many podcasts, interviews, projects, and documentaries over the course of his career.

Mika was part of the advisory group to Chris Melissinos' "The Art of Video Games" exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, was a participant on one of the panels during the opening weekend of the exhibition, and contributed the introduction to the book, "The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect", co-authored by Melissinos and his longtime friend, Patrick O'Rourke.

Mika is a founding board member of The Video Game History Foundation.