SHAUN BEBBINGTON
RG’S ORIGINAL STAFF WRITER LOOKS BACK AT HIS TIME ON THE MAG
WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING ON RETRO GAMER AS A STAFF WRITER?
It was pretty good at the start, but things started to go downhill quickly as I was out of my depth. I wasn’t a gamer. Not really. I was more interested in hardware, but people were still making software for the 8-bit computers that I grew up with, so I wanted to write about those new games. Although I was only there for nine months, and most people don’t know that I contributed anything to RG, I had a small but significant influence on the magazine and I think retro gaming in general, in the sense that people now take new software for 8-bit machines more seriously.
WHICH OF YOUR FEATURES ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
The feature in issue two about Commodore computers. I was asked to write ten pages, more than I’d ever written before, and Martyn gave me a deadline of several weeks. This became two weeks as issue one had done really well and the intended quarterly publication was now going monthly. It became an allwaking-hours job, and some of the work had to be rewritten because I was using Microsoft Notepad on a Windows 98 machine and it couldn’t save that many characters.
DID THE MAGAZINE’S EARLY SUCCESS SURPRISE YOU?
Everyone was surprised at its success, and then everyone tried to claim RG as their baby. All I remember is how much work Martyn put into the mag. I know it was Martyn and Mat Mabe who had the vision.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON RG STILL BEING HERE, 20 YEARS ON?
It’s pretty amazing, even to me, that there are print magazines in 2024, but I guess if you’re a retro gamer, you still want a physical periodical that informs and delights. Retro Gamer must be doing some of that.