ANDREW SLEIGH
The name may not be familiar but you’ll know his games. Graphics artist Andrew Sleigh worked at Ocean from 1986 to 1990 and was part of the in-house team that helped turn it into one of Europe’s biggest software houses
Words by Martyn Carroll
These days Andrew is a selfemployed 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 Batman, from Zzap!64.
They’ve awarded your graphics 94% and called them “virtually perfect”. It doesn’t get much better than that does it?
No it doesn’t really. But in a bit I’ll tell you what I lost.
OK, so let’s go back to the beginning.
How did you get into computers in the first place?
My dad was always into CB radio and that sort of technology, and he could see that computers were going to be the future. The first computer we got was a ZX81 which came with a small book of 1K games that I typed in. I then started programming on that. When the Spectrum was announced we were one of the first to order it and I can clearly remember the day when I saw the postman arriving with a large parcel. That was it – down tools for the rest of the day and get it all set up. The Spectrum was unbelievable. Sound, colour, no RAM pack wobbles.
When did you start getting into the graphics side?
I was always into art at school, in a roundabout way. It’s not something I ever took seriously though. But when the Spectrum came along I got into messing around with graphics and altering stuff. There was nobody to tell you how to do it so I just went at it. It got serious once mum and dad realised they had to buy a second TV just for me as I was always on the Spectrum.
So how did you end up working at Ocean, exclusively on Commodore 64 games?
Well I never actually owned a Commodore 64. When I left school in 1984 I did a two-year college course in computer studies, so I was learning COBOL programming while still playing around with graphics and trying to write Spectrum games at home. Then in 1986 I finished my exams and started looking around for a proper job and I saw an advert for a graphics designer wanted at Ocean Software in Manchester. I thought why not? I had a dot-matrix printer so I created an A4 sheet of Spectrum graphics which included the Ocean logo on a waving flag that I’d done. I sent that off and was invited over for an interview. Even that was a marvellous thing for me, and when I arrived they said, “You can start next week”! It wasn’t really an interview. There were no tough questions. I don’t even think I asked how much I was going to be paid.