Industry Guests MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED!

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Grant Kirkhope is an award winning, BAFTA nominated composer who created the soundtracks for a lot of your favorite video game franchises including Goldeneye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, Donkey Kong 64, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Perfect Dark, Mario + Rabbids, Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse (2013), Yooka Laylee, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, & Minecraft Dungeons. He's been a guest composer on games like Street Fighter 6, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, & World of Warcraft: Shadowlands & he even played guitar on Conker: Live & Reloaded, Star Fox Adventures, Blast Corps, & Killer Instinct 2/Gold. Grant is also the composer of the infamous "Donkey Kong Rap" from Donkey Kong 64, which was also featured in the 2023 Super Mario Bros Movie.

Grant was the voice of Donkey Kong for over 15 different games starting with Donkey Kong 64 & was also the voice of Mumbo Jumbo, Jinjo & other various characters in the Banjo-Kazooie franchise. His voice over work can also be heard in Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata, Terrain of Magical Expertise, Macbat 64, & Yooka-Laylee.

Dan Kitchen is one of Activision's original Game Designers, & he is renowned for such Atari 2600 classics like Crackpots, Ghostbusters, F-14 Tomcat, Crossbow, Ikari Warriors, Commando, River Raid II, Kung-Fu Master & more. He is credited with developing & producing over 240 commercially released titles across 25 platforms including the Atari 2600, various SEGA & Nintendo consoles, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, & Apple devices. Dan also produced the movie prototype versions of “Eternal Death Slayer 3” & “Demonik” that were used in the movie Grandma’s Boy.

Dan, along with his brother Garry Kitchen & former Activision co-founder David Crane, founded Audacity Games in November 2020 & plan to continue releasing new games for the Atari 2600 throughout 2026 & beyond!

  Garry Kitchen is a video game designer, creator, & programmer who is best known for his work at Activision during the early years of the company's history. His career in interactive entertainment spans over 30 years, initially as a toy designer & quickly transitioning into a pioneer in the launch of the video game industry. From 1981-1995, Garry was an industry leader in the development of home video games. He has developed games for the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, & Super Nintendo Entertainment System. His port of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 was a major hit, selling over 4 million copies.

Garry, along with his brother Dan Kitchen & Activision co-founder David Crane, founded Audacity Games in November 2020 & plan to continue releasing new games for the Atari 2600 throughout 2026 & beyond!

  David Crane is one of the most successful designers of entertainment software in the world. His award-winning video games, led by Pitfall!, Ghostbusters, A Boy & His Blob, & Amazing Tennis are acknowledged as some of the most innovative & popular in the interactive entertainment industry. Crane, a founder of Activision in 1979 & Absolute Entertainment in 1986, has consistently produced superb products, as evidenced by his worldwide sales of over 10 million games. Prior to his days at Activision, Crane was employed at Atari, where he wrote such hits as Outlaw, Slot Machine & Canyon Bomber. He was also instrumental in the design of the Atari 800 computer's operating system.

David, along with Dan Kitchen & Garry Kitchen, founded Audacity Games in November 2020 & plan to continue releasing new games for the Atari 2600 throughout 2026 & beyond!

Ed Annunziata is a long-time veteran of the video game industry, with titles spanning platforms from multiple generations to current consoles. He is perhaps best-known for his groundbreaking work at SEGA creating the Ecco the Dolphin series. He went on to create a number of other beloved games at Sega, including X-Men, X-Men 2: The Clone Wars, Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin, & Chakan the Forever Man on Genesis, Kolibri for the 32X, & Mr. Bones & Three Dirty Dwarves for the Saturn, before leaving SEGA to found AndNow, LLC. There, he created Tiny Tank & Mort the Chicken for the PS1, with the latter character most recently securing a guest appearance in the game Pizza Tower. Following stints at Leapfrog Enterprises and Nokia's N-Gage, Ed formed Plachemy, and has continued to produce additional innovative titles such as Slice HD and Space War Arena. Ed is currently working on reviving the Ecco the Dolphin franchise.

Grayson Wendell joined the games industry in 2007 as a programmer at id Software and has since worked at Zynga, GREE, EA, Unity, & Activision.  He has worked on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Doom II RPG, RAGE, Words with Friends, Battlestone, Project Blackbird (cancelled game), Command and Conquer: Rivals, Star Wars: Rise to Power (cancelled game), Unity Engine, & Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile. A few years ago, he formed Sleepy Bits Games with his wife for Android & NES projects, and has just recently released their second original homebrew title, Old Oak Lane.  They have already announced their third NES game, The Halls of Talamh Domhain, which is their most ambitious yet!

Grayson will be hosting a panel - Intro to N64 Reverse Engineering & Randomizers

Have you ever wanted to change how your favorite N64 games work? By walking through examples from developing an item randomizer for Shadowgate 64, this panel will introduce approaches and technical requirements, as well as what tools are available, to let you hit the ground running for your own mods! 

Frank Cifaldi is a video game preservationist, historian, & developer. Cifaldi initially developed a website titled Lost Levels dedicated to unreleased video games; this led to writing for print & web sources such as Nintendo Official Magazine UK & Gamasutra. In the early 2010s, Cifaldi pivoted his career from journalism to game development, working at Other Ocean & producing work on compilation titles such as the Mega Man Legacy Collection (2015), The Disney Afternoon Collection (2017), Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (2018), & the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (2018) for Digital Eclipse. He founded the Video Game History Foundation (a non-profit with the primary aim of archival, preservation, & dissemination of historical media related to video games) in 2016 & left Digital Eclipse around 2020 to focus on the foundation full time.

Frank will be hosting a panel - Video Game History Foundation Turns Ten

VGHF founder Frank Cifaldi reflects on ten years of starting a video game preservation non-profit from scratch! Attendees will hear behind-the-scenes stories, hard-earned wisdom, & more in this impassioned & personal talk from someone who has dedicated his life to preserving, celebrating & teaching the history of games.

Joe Cain is a game/level designer, producer, & a former Sega of America lead/general tester with over 30 years of experience in the Video Game industry, from QA to production & creative direction. He has worked with Sega of America, Atari, The 3DO Company, Digital Eclipse, Electronic Arts, App Ant Studios, GREE, IGT, & iWin. Joe was the lead/general tester on over 40 Sega Genesis titles including Ecco the Dolphin, Ecco: The Tides of Time, Eternal Champions, Disney’s Aladdin, X-Men, X-Men 2: Clone Wars, Sonic the Hedgehog: Spinball, Sonic & Knuckles, Taz in Escape From Mars, Shadowrun, Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition, Streets of Rage 3, & many more. Beyond QA leadership, Joe has worked extensively in game/level design & production. His credits include Gubble, Gubble 2, Disney’s Bonkers, Mort the Chicken, Disney's Tarzan: Return to the Jungle, Disney's Kim Possible: Revenge of Monkey Fist, Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000, Fight for Life, Ruiner Pinball, Tiny Tank & many other titles. Over the past 2 decades, Joe has focused heavily on online & live-service gaming. Notably, he spent 8 years at Electronic Arts working on Pogo.com, contributing to one of the industry's most successful casual gaming platforms.