I woke up and read this news here, and was instantly reminded of so many great times I had with Mike. I'm not a frequent poster, but I figured it would be worth sharing a few memories. Most people won't have heard of Mike here, and I thought you should all know what a great guy he was.
I knew and worked with Mike many years ago. It always sounds like a cliche, but as I approach my 24th year in this industry, I can honestly say he was one of the nicest people I ever met in the business.
Mike joined Acclaim Entertainment sometime after I left in 1999.
We met for the first time when I took the latest build of "Burnout" on PlayStation2 up to their Knightsbridge office. From the outset, he greeted me warmly and somehow I felt like I'd known him all my life. I'm sure many others who knew Mike would say the same thing. He was always positive, upbeat and happy. And that tended to rub off on the people around him.
Mike was a huge supporter of myself, my studio (Criterion Games) and my game. It's because of people like Mike, and the hundred or so other people who worked for Acclaim in Europe at that time that the game became successful. A lot of people in many different areas put in the work to spread the word and make it all happen. A lot of people were involved back then to take a gold master CD from the developer and get it into a box on a shelf somewhere around the world.
After Burnout and Burnout 2: Point of Impact, I met with different publishers to discuss what would become the third game. By then, Mike had moved to working for SEGA Europe and I met up with him at E3 in Los Angeles that year.
He hosted what became an almost infamous meeting between myself, his team and some marketing people from Sega of America. It was quickly clear that the other folks has never played my games or knew much about that. At some point I was asked if I was sure if I even wanted to continue making Burnout 3 "as they had Sega GT coming out and were going to dominate the genre!" Let's just say that I crossed SEGA off my list after that and Mike had his head in his hands during the meeting. We didn't have to convince SEGA Europe, they would have loved to have had the game.
Later on that morning, Mike arranged for me to meet probably my all-time hero in game development, the legendary Yu Suzuki. I remember that moment clearly - and was impressed that Yu was the only person smoking a cigarette in the LA Convention Centre! I won't write what we talked about - but I just shared it with my team just now and they all laughed! Thanks Mike for making that happen!
I saw Mike at a few shows on an off after that, and I lost touch with him around 2007. I heard from a friend he was at Square the other year and made a mental note to drop him a line and say hi.
I never got around to doing that. I wish I had.
