My Favourite Game Mark Kinchen

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

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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?