Mevlüt Dinç

Mevlüt Dinç (born May 1957), better known as Mev Dinc, is a Turkish-British video game designer. Born and raised in Turkey, he moved to England in 1979 while finishing his studies, intending to pursue a master's degree there. Unable to pay the high tuition fees for international students, Dinc worked in a cable factory in Southampton, where a colleague introduced him to video games and got him a ZX Spectrum when it was released in 1982. Dinc taught himself to program via magazines and began working in the video game industry in 1983, starting with assisting on the Commodore 64 conversion of Ant Attack, released in 1984. After his first original game, Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin' , in 1985, he worked with Electric Dreams Software on another original game, Prodigy, the Amstrad CPC port of Enduro Racer, and various tie-ins with films and TV series.

After leaving Electric Dreams, Dinc co-developed Last Ninja 2 for System 3 and, together with former System 3 employees Hugh Riley and John Twiddy, founded Vivid Image in September 1989. After moving back to Turkey in 2000, Dinc founded Dinç İnteraktif (later renamed Sobee Studios), which he sold to Türk Telekom in 2009 and subsequently left in 2013. Dinc has received several awards for his work and is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Early life Mev Dinc was born Mevlüt Dinç in May 1957 in Ordu, Turkey, to a family of Georgian descent. He grew up in a remote village from the city and studied economics at the Ankara Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences. During this time, he married an English woman and moved to England in 1979, travelling back-and-forth between the two countries to complete his education later that year. He eventually adopted the short name "Mev", citing that "no one could say it properly" in England. When the ZX Spectrum was released in 1982, Dos Santos pre-ordered one each for himself and Dinc, despite Dinc's continued lack of interest. When Dinc eventually unboxed his ZX Spectrum, he struggled to understand the enclosed instruction book for the BASIC programming language. He instead taught himself to program over the course of two years via programming magazines, particularly Popular Computing Weekly. Dinc cited the 1983 game Arcadia, which he examined as part of his learning, as major influence. The society had its inaugural meeting on 5 May 1984 in Ilford. Dinc acted as its chairman. Dinc's first original game was Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin' , in which the player controls a pathogen that invades a human body. He initially pitched the game to publisher Mirrorsoft (part of the Mirror Group conglomerate), which rejected the game, citing the reputation of the Mirror Group. Dinc later met Tony Rainbird, the managing director for the Firebird publishing label. Although Dinc considered the British Telecom (which Firebird was part of) more respectable than the Mirror Group and therefore thought that the label would reject his game, Rainbird was fond of the idea and agreed to publish it. Dinc entirely developed the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC version and had Edwin Rayner, whom he had met in Southampton, create a Commodore 64 port. Although released in 1985 as a budget-price title, Gerry the Germ sold well, generating "quite a lot of royalties", especially in the United States. First Samurai was released for various platforms in 1991. An expanded sequel, Second Samurai, came out in 1993. The demo was first shown off in 2000 as part of a promotion of the Pentium 4 line of central processing units. By 2000, Dinc felt as though he had reached the peak of his career in the UK.

/ Working out of the Software Development Centre at the Istanbul Technical University, Dinc founded Dinç İnteraktif in 2000. By April 2001, Dinc had hired Will Cowling and Ben Donnelly, who joined him from England, as well as Engin Cilasun and Bager Akbay; Dinc expected to eventually grow the studio to 45–50 people. Under Dinc, Sobee developed Süpercan, I Can Football 2, and Süpercan 2. This federation was eventually folded into the ministry's Emerging Sports Branches Federation. That studio was dissolved in June 2021. In 2020, Dinc published a Turkish-language autobiography, Life Is a Game, donating all proceeds to Darüşşafaka Society.

Games Year Title Developer(s) Publisher(s) 1984 Ant Attack Sandy White, Paul Fik Quicksilva 1985 Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin' Mev Dinc Firebird 1986 Prodigy Electric Dreams Software Electric Dreams Software / Activision Enduro Racer Big Trouble in Little China Aliens: The Computer Game 1987 Knightmare Last Ninja 2 System 3 Activision 1990 Hammerfist Vivid Image Time Machine 1991 First Samurai Image Works 1993 Second Samurai Psygnosis 1994 Street Racer Ubi Soft 1998 S.C.A.R.S. 2002 Dual Blades Metro3D 2004 Online Football Manager Sobee Studios MyNet Semih Saygıner's Billiards Magic 2006 Sobee Studios 2009 I Can Football 2011 Süpercan 2012 I Can Football 2 Süpercan 2 Heroes Chained Inventuna Games Inventuna Games

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