Garry Kitchen

Working with his talented brothers, Dan Kitchen and Steve Kitchen, all three siblings have worked from the gaming industry since the early 80's. Garry Kitchen is credited with the creation of a number of popular and well-known games for the Atari, such as Donkey Kong and Keystone Kapers, as well as the popular "Bart vs..." series of games.

Kitchen actually had no real interest in computers at first, Steve being the computer savvy nerd, and his interests being in artwork. However, about a year into college Kitchen decided that it was fun but that he couldn't get a job with that stuff. After his father got the three siblings into electronics, he tried a degree in engineering and put art on the side.

Garry Kitchen started out working for his brother Steve, getting a job from him in his electronics company after college. One day, Steve decided he wanted to try and make an electronic game with Garry. Their electronic hand-held Bank Shot went on to be marketed by Parker Brothers in 1980. After that Kitchen decided "That's it--no more digital clocks, no more calculators. Games is what I want to do."

Garry Kitchen's first game for the Atari VCS was his work for U.S. Games, converting Space Jockey to the Atari in 1981. However, his more well-known work of the day came when he was working under contract with Steve, who received an offer from Coleco, a game company. Steve had worked with Coleco in the past and was asked by them to create a console conversion of their arcade hit Donkey Kong. However, since he was busy other work, he contracted Garry to do the project. In 1982, Garry created the Atari VCS conversion of the Coleco arcade smash hit Donkey Kong, which immediately became a hit and went on to earn $100 million dollars in sales revenue. Moving on to Activision, Garry Kitchen went on to create another hit, Keystone Kapers for the Atari in 1983, which sold over 750,000 units. During this time with Activision he also designed Pressure Cooker for the Atari VCS as well. One of his last works with Activision was his work Gamemaker for the Commodore 64/Apple II, released in the summer of 1985. This program allowed users to easily create a wide variety of games on the C64 and Apple II, and became one of the top-selling Activision games on the Commodore 64. It earned Kitchen the title of Video Game Designer of the Year in 1985.

In 1986 he left Activision and created his own company, Absolute Entertainment, Inc.. This company went on to create more than 120 software titles, working with companies such as Nintendo, Sega, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Activision, 3DO, and Electronic Arts. During this time one of his most famous works was his 1991 release of The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, kicking off the "Bart vs..." series of licensed games. His 1992 game Super Battletank, the sequel to his 1990 game Battletank, was named Best Simulation Game by Game Informer Magazine

Kitchen went on to continue making games with his siblings Dan and Steve. He has made numerous appearances on CNBC, ABC Eyewitness News and CNN on the subject of interactive entertainment.

Garry Kitchen was the President/CEO of Skyworks Technologies, Inc., a privately held multimedia developer specializing in interactive marketing and high-end game development, which he co-founded. Kitchen left the company in 2009.

Kitchen co-founded Audacity Games with his brother Dan and David Crane in 2020. Their aim is to create Atari 2600 games which can be played on retro consoles.

His work with video games has earned him a Lifetime Achievement Award in Video Games.