Dark wrote:Jim Kitchin, a tribute
On the second of August this year, James H Kitchin, more commonly known as Jim Kitchin passed away at the age of 58.
Jim has been a major contributor to the world of accessible games for over twenty years, from the old Dos days to the more modern Windows, indeed often the first advice someone is given if they have trouble running older games on a modern machine is "Try Jim's games"
Jim has written more accessible games than any other developer, and Jim's work has covered a wide variety of gaming genres, all available for free, and all with quirky sound affects, random humour and a sense of fun.
Jim's games also featured the chance for different people to get involved. Many of his games could be played between different players at the same machine, and several groups still exist who regularly play Jim's games using skype or other chat software, as well as friends and family who sit down to play games together. Jim's games also featured some of the most major opportunities for none players to contribute, whether the over 350 Golf Courses created to be played in his Golf game, or the many question sets for his Trivia, or monopoly board configurations.
Jim was a major contributer to the audeasy discussion list, where his sense of fun and humour and his willingness to be helpful to anyone from tech novices to advanced programmers always made him stand out, not to mention his regular babble reports of on list activity and his amusing taglines.
Outside the world of gaming, Jim was the vice chairman of the Geauga metropolitan housing commission, and was the beloved friend and companion of MArcie Brown who passed away herself in 2009. Jim is survived by his Brother Glen and his sister Cindy, as well as his mother, and our best wishes and sympathies are with them and everyone who was closest to Jim at this sad time.
Whether you ever new Jim, or just played one of his games, one thing that nobody can deny is that through his astounding work, energetic personality and persistant good humour, Jim has touched the lives of hundreds of people across the world, and leaves behind him an amazing legacy that will still be giving people challenges, entertainment and hours of pleasure for years to come.
To read his formal Obituary, and leave any thoughts or good wishes, please see This topic, kindly posted by Phil.
And of course if you've never played Jim's games, well he might still be able to surprise, shock and delight you! sinse as he often said, he makes games that are %100 funner to play!
This is a lengthy tribute, thanks for reading:
I had to edit the quoted message a bit. Would not let me send lol, my tribute is probably too long, but their's so much to say about jim, and I knew him very well.
That was a beautiful tribute to a warm and funny man, that's why I quoted the tribute. I knew Jim for over 20 years, he was a dear friend of mine, and he will be sorely missed. I never got the chance to meet him in person. We had always planned on meeting up, but it never happened. His games were all amazing. I'll always remember he jokingly refered to his games as fastfood games, the idea being you could pop in, play one of his simple but powerful games with ease, and pop out. He always tried to design games so they weren't complex to learn, and all could play, without having to read a book so to speak to learn how to play the game. I along with many others helped him come up with new ideas for games, and suggested features as well. I used to help beta test a lot of his games, as they progressed to full release. His puppy1 game is probably my favorite one. I told him for years I had always wanted an airplane game, I love flying. One day I looked on the site, and their it was, I nearly cried. I called him, and thanked him for making it, and I gave him some ideas for version 2. Their's other airplane games out their, but you almost have to be a pilet, or have a great deal of understanding of actual flying to play.
Remember his old bop-it game from the mid 90
s? I wanted a bop-it game for the computer, because I already had the original hardware game, he thought it was a good idea and went for it. I vividly remember giving him the music that was used in the game, it's the south park theme music lol. I also contributed to the original trucker game by sending him yes a wav file of Willy Nelson's on the road again using dialup internet at the time..
A few times I was down on my luck, and he was their for me. When I didn't have online access one time, and I was inbetween jobs, he sent me a cd of all his games, and new voices to use to play them, I'll always remember that. We spent a lot of time on the phone over the years, and we shared a lot of personal experiences and went through a lot of changes, together, and we talked about all that as it was happening. I just heard about this yesterday. I would be more than willing to pay for the flowers, and anything else that's needed. he touched my life in so many way's. If proon sorry if I got the name wrong or somebody who is arranging this could get in touch with me, I would greatly appreciate it. I want to be apart of it, and pay my respects to him. He gave the world something very special. I wonder if somebody might get in touch with Joshua Griffith the person who maintains his current site? It would be cool if this site could somehow stay in place. Most importantly he's reunited with Marcy who was his true love, I remember he talked at length with me about her, how much he loved her, and how much he missed her since her death. He loved her with all his heart and sole. Marcy is featured in the SAPI pong version. He was very proud to have featured her in that game, and he wanted her in other games. He had an amazing spirit that always shown through, like a glowing bright light. He wrote his very own email client, and Jaws 4.2 was the last version he used. He hardly updated his computers, including windows. We both thought that was funny, and we laughed about that often. &Yet somehow he was able to keep creating games without having to update his computers or software, because he did not do any of that, lol. We both had so many ideas for new games. we both wanted a traditional pinball game. I worry their won't be a central place where people can get his games, also people need to have a place to post new board files for games like golf, his trivia game, and monopoly. He always enjoyed all the new boards people would create for the games, and he always wanted as many boards as possible. I know without a doubt, he would love to see more boards created for those games, we talked about it. If some sites only have a few of the boards, while other sites have everything, that could get confusing to people who want to have everything in it's original form, including any new boards made for those 3 games mentioned above, plus any new updates that may be made to his games. You don't necessarily need the winkit program to run his games, but he designed it that way so it would be easy for people to run his games. For some reason the winkit program will not run on my windows 7 machine. I told him about it, and we never got to the bottom of it lol. You can make a folder for his games on the hard drive, unzip them into that folder, and just run the main executables. I always admired his character, and his honesty. Some people encouraged him to sell his games, and he refused, he always said no. He always wants his games to be free for all to enjoy. Somebody asked about those board meeting recordings. He posted those because he cared deeply about the people in the building he lived in, and housing authority issues. I remember him telling me once that him and a group of people used to play bowling on the Wee, and I guess he got pretty good at it, that was a regular hobby of his, he did that for year's. He was kind, caring, and very generisRest in peace jim, and have some wild turkey for me, he loved wild turkey, absolutely loved it.
