ANDREW SLEIGH

These days Andrew is a self-employed web developer, a job he’s done for the past 20 years. But when Retro Gamer calls it’s not to enquire about a new website or a forum upgrade. We want to know about his four years at Ocean where he worked on some of the firm’s biggest licences including Platoon, Gryzor and Batman. We meet him on a cold April afternoon in Buxton, in a quiet corner of his local pub The Cheshire Cheese, next to a roaring log fire. Titanic ales are flowing, and so too are tales of Andrew’s time in the Ocean dungeon.

Can we begin with this folder you’ve brought with you?

It’s something that I made at the end, when I left Ocean. It’s a portfolio of original magazine cuttings.

So reviews of all the games you worked on. And what’s this? Looks like you made the local news?

That’s a clipping from the local paper, the Buxton Advertiser. I think it must have been my mum who got in touch with them, “Look, my son’s done this!” It was from when I was working on Batman. The photo pretty much shows my setup at Ocean. A Commodore 64, monitor, disk drive, joystick.

That looks like a Powerplay Cruiser joystick you’re holding. Is that what you used to create all your graphics?

Yeah there was no mouse or anything. I did get a repetitive strain injury after about two or three years, doing this – click, click, click, click – on the joystick every day. My hand was strapped up for about six months.

Here’s the review of , from . They’ve awarded your graphics 94% and called them “virtually