Interviews:Gonzo

This interview with Gonzo was taken back in 2001 by Wraggster.

DCEmulation: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Gonzo: I'm 19 years old and from Austria. Still student at a higher school for informatics.

DCEmulation: What's your programming history?

Gonzo: I started 4 years ago with C,C++. In the following years I learned (Visual) Basic, Java and PHP.

DCEmulation: What projects are you currently doing?

Gonzo: 2 days ago I would have said "nothing" but in the last 2 days I started porting 2 new emulators. The first one is a Odyssey 2 emulator(port of O2EM). It's already running but there are some problems(no sound and only 4k rom support). The second one is a port of Virtual VCS , a Atari2600 emu without sound support. That one is running too on the DC but i have problems with the graphics output and controller input. And I'm still working on [D]Colem. These are the DC projects. Theres also a PC project I'm working on with 2 friends. It's a massive multiplayer online game programmed in Java. But thats another story...

DCEmulation: What interest do you have in the dreamcast dev scene?

Gonzo: It's a hobby so I think I should say fun. But it's also about learning. It's much easier to learn something new if you are doing something you like. PC programming is boring but programming for the DC is much more fun.

DCEmulation: What future projects, if any, are you looking into?

Gonzo: DreamSNES 1.0 and tubooboos PC Engine emu (great console!).

DCEmulation: Why did you choose the Colecovision console to emulate?

Gonzo: It wasn't already emulated on the DC and the source was well written and documented. And it has a great version of Donkey Kong...

DCEmulation: Do you see the dreamcast scene progressing much further or do you think it has reached its peak?

Gonzo: It's just the beginning. Existing emulators will progress and there will be new ones wich emulate newer consoles. I wouldn't be suprised if PSX,N64,Neo Geo or similar emulators will find their way to the DC. I don't think that emus like this are going to run in fullspeed or play commercial games but maybe somegames would be playable. At least with an PSX emulator.

DCEmulation: Whats your viewpoint on the Bleemcast Emulator from a technical standpoint?

Gonzo: Bleemcast is awesome and worth the money. It shows whats possible on the DC when it comes to emulate newer machines. Oh and i would kill someone to have a look at bleemcasts sourcecode. Such power makes me curious.

DCEmulation: What do you think of the dcemulation website?

Gonzo: I think it's a good source for the users to get their infos and emulators. From the developer's view it's not too helpful. Obwohl it's getting better with people like Heliophobe or Akira and some other devers visiting the forums. Oh yeah and it's nice to see that dcemu is getting rid of the illegal stuff like ******* .