Robert J. Mical

Robert J. Mical (born 26 January 1956) is an American computer programmer and hardware designer who has primarily worked in video games. He is best known for creating the user interface, Intuition, for Commodore's Amiga personal computer, contributing to the design of the Amiga hardware, and co-designing, with Dave Needle, the Atari Lynx color handheld (1989) and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (1993).

He also worked on arcade video games at Williams Electronics, was the chief architect of the Fathammer mobile game engine, and was at Sony Computer Entertainment from 2005 to 2011 as a senior manager on the PlayStation product line. In 2012, he was hired by Google.

A 1995 article in Next Generation commented "It's true that of the machines that Mical and Needle have created, only the Amiga has been a true global mass market hit ... But it's only fair to put forward the argument that this is down to the marketing of the machines rather than the quality of the product."

Biography Robert J. Mical graduated in 1979 from the University of Illinois with dual degrees in Computer Science and English and a minor in Philosophy.

From 1983 to 1984, Mical was software engineer at arcade video game and pinball creator Williams Electronics. He worked on special effects for Sinistar (1983) and coordinated the Star Rider LaserDisc racing project.

From 1984 to 1986, Mical worked for Amiga Corporation and then Commodore International on the development of the Amiga 1000 and later models. He created various development tools and the animation system software. He developed Intuition, the Amiga user interface system software. In 2001 and 2002, he was chief architect of Fathammer, a company which provided software development and runtime technology for the creation of 3D games on mobile phones. In 2003 and 2004, Mical was the vice president of software at Global VR, a company that created arcade versions of home games.

From 2005 to 2011, he was employed by Sony Computer Entertainment working on developer tools for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Since 2011 he has worked on software games and inventions with his own company, Arjinx. in 2012.