At the most recent Consumer Electronics Show, we had an opportunity to talk with Garry Kitchen, a young programmer who has been designing and translating games for Atari game systems for quite a few years now. He has done work for Coleco, Activision, and several less-well-known game publishers, and now he heads a company of his own called Absolute Entertainment, which has released game cartridges for the 2600, 7800, and XE.
We began our interview by asking Garry about his programming background. He told us that he grew up in New Jersey (not far from Atarian headquarters) and "started fooling around with computers when I was in college. I started playing around with an Apple, and when I was 18 or 19 years old began to program professionally."
At first he did "mundane type stuff like photographic timers and digital clocks." Then the consulting company for which he worked decided to investigate the toy market. He invented a hand-held game called Bankshot, which was manufactured by Parker Brothers, and continued to work on hand-held products for several years—right up until the time Atari released the famous 2600.
It looked as though the future of electronic games was going to be in cartridges, so "I persuaded my company to reverse-engineer [take it apart and figure out how it worked] the 2600 so we could write games for it."
When the reverse-engineering project was finished, Garry wrote his first 2600 game, Space Jockey for US Games.
Shortly thereafter, he left the consulting company and with his older brother Steve and his younger brother Dan obtained a contract from Coleco to program Donkey Kong for the 2600. The program sold well, so the brothers decided to offer their services to Activision, then one of the biggest names in the computer entertainment industry.
The Glory Days "Those were the glory days. We joined them in 1982 when things were really hot—a lot of money was being made. The 2600 was hot, and we really had a good time until 1984 when the market started to deteriorate."
The brothers then decided to form their own company, Absolute Entertainment. "We wanted to control our own destiny—what programs to write, what systems to support, etc.
"Right about that time we discovered through market research that the 2600 market wasn't really gone and that there was room for new titles. So we released Title Match Wrestling and Skateboardin' for the 2600, both of which did very well."
The games, like many subsequent Absolute titles, were distributed by Activision under an exclusive sales agreement, and both still hold positions near the top of 2600 sales charts.
In addition to the games released under the Absolute Entertainment label, the company has had a hand in several other best-selling titles for the 2600. Kung Fu Master by Activision, for example, was produced under a consulting arrangement. And RealSports Boxing and Crossbow were produced by Absolute for Atari.
Garry has also been working on 7800 titles for Atari, all of which are adaptations of existing games—Accolade's Ace of Aces and Fight Night, Touchdown Football, and a version of Crossbow. Absolute Entertainment has also begun to support the 7800 and will manufacture and distribute games under its own label. The company's first two games for the 7800 system are Super Skateboardin' and F-18 Hornet, which Garry reports have been selling well.
At the Winter Consumer Electronics Show, Absolute announced three additional titles for the 7800 and two— Tomcat and Pete Rose Baseball—for the 2600.
Next we asked Garry about the XE game system. He told us that the company plans to support the XE as a third-party developer—doing most titles for sale by Atari—rather than as a manufacturer. He also mentioned that Absolute is currently doing "a little bit" of 7800 and 2600 work for Activision.
As for the company itself, Absolute Entertainment currently employs 14 people, ten of whom are involved in product development. "We have a lot of programmers, a couple of artists, and a group of designers who oversee the entire development process.
"We also use outside people, including six or seven consultants. So I guess our total group consists of about 20 people.
Starting from Scratch "Typically," we asked, "when you create a new game from scratch, where does the idea come from, and what is the process that carries the idea from the designer's mind to the consumer's cartridge slot?"
Garry replied that the core group of designers includes him and his brothers, Steve and Dan, and Alex DiMeo, a programmer who has been working with them for a long time. In addition, the company has recently hired David Crane, the designer of Pitfall and one of the founders of Activision.
"The five of us brainstorm a lot; we have more ideas than we have time to execute them. We keep a long list of things we would like to do—there is always something waiting in the wings.
"Once we have the concept for a game, we usually find that we come across a technical hurdle—3D algorithms or some other difficult thing to implement on the 2600—that stands in the way of designing the product the way we want it. We then assign one of our senior guys to find a way to eliminate that hurdle, and when he is convinced that it can be done, he becomes the product manager.
"He supervises the work of a team consisting of an artist and a programmer or two. They work out the design together, and three to six months later, we have a game that we can put on a cartridge."
Most game players have a fairly good idea what programmers do, but we asked Garry to tell us a little bit about the responsibilities of an artist in the game design process.
"On the 7800, in particular, the artist does a tremendous amount of work with computer graphics. In the wrestling game, for example, the artist drew all the characters; in F-18 Hornet he drew the fighter planes. As the design of the game progresses, he draws the various animation frames and the backgrounds—the wrestling ring and crowd of fans, for example. We feel that we have some of the best artists around, and we think their work is making our 7800 games graphically outstanding."
Conversions
We asked Garry to comment on the view expressed by some manufacturers that kids want only conversions of coin-op arcade games for their home systems.
"I don't think that's true at all. Of course, it is difficult to create a game that doesn't look like everything else out there. That's why companies rely on licensed titles—if a company announces it has Rampage, everbody knows what that means.
"But we don't worry much about coin-op conversions. We examine the market, look for gaps, and generally find plenty of potential for creative designers to produce games we know people will like.
2008 ben langberg, all rights reserved.