Garry Kitchen and GameMaker
I found this signed GameMaker manual in a recent purchase.
It sure looked like it said Garry to me.
So I found his contact info, which wasn’t very hard with a Goggle Search. To my surprise I heard back in less than one day.
He told me that it is definitely something he signed. Although not 30 years ago, as I had imagined.
Quote: I often appear at retro gaming shows and participate in panel discussions, etc. The talks are often followed by a “meet & greet/autograph session.” People sometimes bring items from their collection for me to sign. I’ve seen my share of GameMaker manuals.
I also asked him about GameMaker and if he had any secrets about it:
He said: “GameMaker, it took a year+ to make. It’s definitely the product in my portfolio that I’m most proud of. I wish that I had continued to work on it/update it. It’s a shame that it stopped after the original version, it could have gone a lot further.
By the way, Pitfall took 2 weeks to write in GameMaker. And the commercially-released C-64 arcade port Crossbow was written entirely in GameMaker!”
He finished by saying: If I ever get back to working on GameMaker I’ll let you know.
WOW, just how cool is that.. Thank you Garry!
Gamemaker definitely should’ve seen a 2.0 release, at the very least. The framework and interface were already well-established, from there it was just a matter of adding things: more Editor commands that perhaps addressed disk IO, different Scene Maker graphics modes, maybe a Tile Maker for scrolling background support, et cetera.
His revelation about the C64 port of Crossbow is also interesting, since there were clearly elements in that game that fell beyond GM’s capabilities (multiple typefaces, multiple backgrounds with more than 4 colors, disk access). Presumably he had his own customized personal version of the software, which I’d give anything to see…