Garry Kitchen

Garry Kitchen (born August 18, 1955 in Washington D.C., United States) is a programmer and video game designer best known for Garry Kitchen's GameMaker for the Commodore 64. In addition to GameMaker, Kitchen also developed or co-developed numerous other games for early video game consoles, including Donkey Kong, Keystone Kapers, Pressure Cooker, and Space Jockey for the Atari 2600, Stealth ATF, Destination Earthstar, Battletank, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the World, and A Boy and His Blob (with David Crane) for the Nintendo NES, Super Battletank and Super Battletank 2 for the Nintendo SNES, and The Designer's Pencil for the Commodore 64.

Contents

• Interview w david crane garry kitchen portland retro gaming expo
• Getting autographs from david crane garry kitchen steve cartwright at cge 2010
• References

Kitchen received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ (1980). Before his video game career, Kitchen developed electronic toys at Wickstead Design Associates, in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey. In 1979, Kitchen was an engineer on Wildfire, a handheld electronic game distributed by Parker Brothers. After Wildfire, in 1982, Kitchen co-invented the handheld electronic game Bank Shot, a pool simulation also distributed by Parker Brothers. Bank Shot was named one of the Ten Best Toys of 1980 by OMNI Magazine. Kitchen was awarded U.S. Patent #4,346,982 "Electronic Pool Game", for Bank Shot.

Kitchen was President/CEO of Absolute Entertainment from 1986-1995. In 1995, Kitchen and his longtime business partner David Crane founded Skyworks Technologies, an early Internet game company known for creating Candystand.com and pioneering the category of online advergames. Kitchen and Crane sold controlling interest in Skyworks in 2007, and left the company in September 2009.

From 2010-2012, Kitchen was the Vice President of Game Publishing for Viacom Media Networks, working in the Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group. In that role he was responsible for game content on AddictingGames.com and Shockwave.com, at the time two of the largest U.S.-based online game sites. In 2012, Kitchen launched the AddictingGames Mobile App for the Apple iPhone, which went to #1 in the Apple App store in 72 hours. The AddictingGames Mobile App was nominated for a 2012 Webby Award in the category of Games (Handheld Devices).

Garry Kitchen currently works as an independent technical expert in legal matters concerning video game and mobile app design and development, patent infringement & invalidity, copyright infringement, general software development, video game industry history and business issues. Kitchen has performed Expert Witness consulting for clients such as Nintendo, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Ubisoft.

Kitchen is on the Board of Advisors of the National Video Game Museum as well as Fairleigh Dickinson University's FDUArts Advisory Board.

Josh Folan's documentary series Batteries Not Included: A Documentary About that Thing You Had When You Were a Kid - Season 3, available on Amazon Video, features Garry Kitchen.