Odd. I cannot find a source for it on Google, twitter, his personal site or facebook.

john romero is the source. the reporter called him, and got a quote.

i can't believe i'm explaining this to someone right now.

Perhaps the source is the article itself (i.e. he was contacted by the author)?

That's probably the case. The author of the article is David Kushner, writer of "Masters of Doom", so he probably knows Romero pretty well.

Its called journalism.

To the snarky replies in this comment subtree: that passage read as if it was referring to some other piece or statement by Romero, which I'd be interested in reading further if it existed. The comparison is apt.

Intuitively, this doesn't seem like a good way to quote someone you called up specifically for this article.