This is long, long, long long overdue, but better late than never.
Back in August, I heard that Jim Kitchen, the one who wrote all those Kitchensinc games, had died. I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. You can even listen to it if you don’t believe me.
Jim Kitchen wrote some pretty amazing games. I remember the days when the only games I could play were text adventure games, which if I was lucky, would beep songs through the PC speaker. Don’t get me wrong, those were fun, but Jim’s DOS games took it to the next level. I remember stumbling across Mach1, and although I spent more time crashing the car, I was blown away by the awesomeness he could pull off. These games were DOS, but they had actual music, and sound effects, and live action. Woe, this was possible? It was because of his games that I figured out how to turn my Braille ‘N’ Speak into a hardware synth because goddamn it, I was going to play Battleship and Baseball and Mach1 and all that.
Then I downloaded the windows games, and they were awesome too. How many hours did I waste playing baseball and golf? And Steve and Brad, do you remember building that custom Monopoly board? I think I tried to update it and I broke it. I’m sorry. But it was so much fun.
You could tell he was a quirky guy…who had a lot of strange imagination. I was never a fan of his adult games, but I’m sure people enjoyed them.
He was a creative guy who probably showed other developers what was possible. Why did he have to go at 58?
He will be missed. BFN,.
All of us.
I lost a lot of money thanks to that golf game of his, but I think I made most of it back through the dinners and the odd case of beer I won. It’s been a long time since I’ve played it. May have to do that.