SAM RIBBITS

ON DESIGNING RETRO GAMER

YOU CAME TO RETRO GAMER FROM LINUX USER, RIGHT?

Yeah, at the time I essentially wanted to change mags and be on – no disrespect to Linux

User – a more creative mag. There was an issue before where I ended up helping a bit for Jonny because I think he maybe had some time off that issue. I got it because Jonny moved to Scifinow.

HOW DID THE JOB ON RETRO GAMER COMPARE TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS?

I was expecting it to be more engaging and be more of a challenge, but I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as fun to work on as it is. I don’t know, a lot of that was like obviously Darran, Nick, Luke and Drew as well, but compared to what I had been doing it was just worlds apart.

WHAT MEMORIES DO YOU HAVE OF OFFICE FUN?

Obviously a lot of the things like the score challenges we used to do, and working late sometimes – obviously working late doesn’t sound like a thing to look forward to, but I don’t know, it just… everyone got delirious.

ARE THERE ANY FEATURES OR COVERS THAT YOU HAVE PARTICULARLY FOND MEMORIES OF?

The Croc feature is one of them, because it was quite near the start of my time and as one of my favourite games it just felt perfect. The Sonic 2 cover that we did won a cover award as well, I really like the Daytona cover and feature – there’s so many.

WERE THERE ANY CHALLENGES OR THINGS YOU DIDN’T LIKE?

On some issues, we’d end up almost biting off more than we can chew and having to work late. As far as things like that, I don’t think any of them we look back on afterwards and don’t go “Wow, that did turn out really well,” though.