My Favourite Game Mark Kinchen

US producer and DJ MK on classic consoles, queuing for midnight launches, and how gaming helps him produce

Mark ‘MK’ Kinchen is an American DJ and producer who first rose to prominence in the ’90s with house hits Always and Love Changes – both featuring Alana Simon. Alongside his own music, Kinchen also produces and remixes tunes for other artists, and has worked with a number of huge names, including Will Smith, Lana Del Ray, Pet Shop Boys and even Celine Dion. But in between all of this work, he also has a console-collecting obsession to feed.  When did you fall in love with games? The first system I had was a Magnavox Odyssey 2 – my grandfather got me one. Everyone knows that system sucked, but you didn’t have many options. My next system was an Intellivision. Then I kind of backtracked and got an Atari 2600. And from then on I’ve had every console that’s been out, pretty much.

Your grandfather sounds progressive.

I think Magnavox had some sort of employee discount where he worked because he wasn’t into videogames – he just thought, ‘This might be cool for my grandson.’ I remember me and my brother used to laugh at how bad the graphics were – we’d put a game in and immediately start laughing.

Have you still got those early machines?