How a basement hacker turned Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600

The following extract is from Perfect Arcade: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat and other classics of currency have invaded the living room by David L. Craddock.

A pale green light covered the stubble and the pale complexion of the man curled in front of his computer screen. Beside, there was a black television except for five horizontal bands of purple color that stretched from top to bottom, like lines on notebook paper.

Garry Kitchen closed his eyes, but the straight red lines were burned in the backs of his eyelids. Behind him came a regular pounding: delivered–book book book. He did not stand up to the bait. He knew what he was seeing. On the screen of the arcade cabinet, a giant monkey the size of King Kong had burned a construction site consisting of red straight beams. At each step, the platforms were twisted and bent until they were sloped like ramps. Standing at the top, the monkey intoned his mechanical and squeaky laugh.

The kitchen clenched its teeth. His replica of the yard was almost perfect. Steel beams, a flaming barrel, a little man in red and blue overalls, a monkey at the top.

There was just one glaring and maddening difference. His platforms refused to bend. It was going to be a problem.

Garry Kitchen has followed with interest the success of Mattel's electronic games. A few years ago, he was a student and pursued art studies and worked part-time at Wickstead Design Associates, a company that manufactured consumer products such as calculators and other electronic devices. digital.

"I ended up getting involved in microprocessor engineering because I had to do it," recalled Kitchen. "During this period, I went from art to school to electrical engineering. I was learning on the job, so why not finish my engineering degree? We were a small company, I let myself be driven by necessity by work of a much higher caliber. There was a guy who could, but he was not available. "

In 1978, consumer electronics went from pocket electronics to the Atari 2600 machine. While Atari started being the only game maker for its console, Activision opened the system in December and developed PC games and the 2600, a tacit admission to developers around the world, allowing them to Write games for Atari material. The kitchen went to her bosses at Wickstead Design Associates and pleaded her case.

"Look, video games are hurting electronic toys," he said. They stared. Video games? The kitchen continued: "Everyone jumps on this Atari affair. We should examine that. "

The kitchen asked around and received few comments. Atari could not stop Activision and other studios from creating games for his device, but he was not obliged to help. There was no software development kit, no prototype console designed to write and test the code. The founders of Activision only knew how to create games for the 2600 because they had worked with it during their stay in the company.

By that time, Kitchen had reversed his schedule, working at WDA full time and taking engineering classes at night. He did not make much money, earning $ 11,000 a year, but he enjoyed getting up every morning to solve new problems. Developing games for the 2600 was his last and biggest challenge. The kitchen raised US $ 1,200 to buy an Apple II – the most expensive "sacred computer" of 1977, including the Commodore PET and Radio Shack TRS-80, and dissected its new machine to learn more about its supporters and outs. It was running on an 8-bit 6502 processor, which he quickly understood after working with microprocessors on electronic toys.

Once the code was written, he understood that he should find a way to put it on an Atari 2600 cartridge. His solution was a custom card with a chip that he had soldered to play at Atari ROMs. The test code required him to run a ribbon cable from the chip on his card to the teeth of the 2600 cartridge.

Six months later, he had completely de-boned the 2600 using his rigged configuration and wrote a game. Space Jockey. The program weighed two kilobytes, four times the size of Mark Lesser's 511-byte pocket games, and was much more complex. A shooter, Space Jockey Scrolls the screen to the right when the player kills enemy ships. Kitchen presented his creation to his bosses at WDA. He had dreamed of Atari and Activision launching a bidding war for Space Jockey, one of the first Atari games written outside the enclosed garden of the studio. Instead, Donald Yu, one of his bosses, published it through US Games, a separate entity they had founded to publish electronic toys. Yu allowed Space Jockey to his business and ready to put it on the market.

Previously, when Atari had used the only engineers able to write software for its console, the games had appeared at a steady pace. The advent of Activision and engineers such as Kitchen allowed the infusion to reach a constant flow. Consumers, thirsty for new titles, missed them, but Garry Kitchen would not see a penny from the sale of Space Jockey when he came out. His bosses, as publisher of the game, would reap any reward.

"You know," he told Yu and the others, "I should earn more than $ 11,000. Bankshot and Space Jockey have become two of the biggest products of WDA.

"We do not think you're worth that much," they said.

The kitchen stopped in early 1982. He did not leave Wickstead Design Associates alone. His brother, Dan, went with him. They join two other engineers and settle in Garry's basement. A few hours after their first meeting, it looked like the laboratory of a mad scientist.

The owner of the house The kitchen we rented had left the basement unfinished. Exposed pipes and cables were suspended from the open ceiling. Several workbenches were pushed against the walls and the four engineers spread out, cluttering each surface with computers and other equipment. Everyone did their own thing. Some guys have experimented with Apple II. Others have tinkered with the 2600 Atari. For now, nobody had a contract to develop something. They were going around until something happened. Coleco was the first to offer something.

Founded in 1932 as Connecticut Leather Company, Coleco pivoted toys in the 1980s with Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. Now the owners were eyeing video games. The kitchen was confusing when he received a call from a subcontracting company offering him a contract with Coleco. "We have one," said the recruiter. He explained that the rumor had circulated about Kitchen's ability to program a 2600 software. "They are looking for someone to make a port of Donkey Kong on the Atari. Are you interested?"

Lighted kitchen. "Sure."