'My career was more like being a character actor than a movie star'
Kevin McGrath helped reverse-engineer the NES at EA, built his own cartridge emulator for the Genesis, and shipped games for three decades — always chasing the next technical challenge.
by Alex Rojas with Kevin McGrath
Sega Retro · April 25, 2025
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“I love having complete control over the whole system. The Genesis was the last platform I worked on that was bare metal.”
“You can give me a technical challenge, like shadows for a 3D character animation on the Nintendo DS, and I'll give it my best effort, but making a game fun to play doesn't appear to be in my wheelhouse.”
“I'm most proud of not missing a single payroll. How many Silicon Valley startups can say that?”
“They fired my girlfriend, who at the time was an artist at Dynamix. She wanted to move to the Bay Area — it had a much bigger marketplace for game artists than Eugene did.”

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