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Interview with: Pascal of the Spoutnickteam

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Date: 2001

The Interview

Wraggster: Where was you born,live and family details etc?
Pascal Bosquet:I'm 25 (04/17/2001) , Belgian, single , and living in the suburd of Liège in a little town called Fléron.
I've two sisters, who don't care much about computers ptogramming. One like video games but she don't like
much being always defeated by me at Virtua Tennis ;)

Wraggster: What qualifications do you have?
Pascal Bosquet:I've studied computers for three years for being graduate.
Next my studies, I got a job as IT in a small services company. There, i've participated to some
management projects mainly programmed in Visual Basic. As most of little companies, it's bad paid
so i get a new job (since April) as a pogrammer in a big one :)

Wraggster: What made you get into computers?
Pascal Bosquet: Since i was young i was in video games. Younger i spent lots of my time in the pub
managed by grand parents which got several arcade games. I've played to nearly all classics
like Ghost'n goblins, Wonderboy , Gallivan, Solomon's key ,... so at the age of 12 , i convinced my parents
for buying a computer (i have used the \"it'll help me for my future job\") ,it was a commodore64 !
So after a long gaming period ( Destroyer, Zack McKraken , Skate or Die,..) i picked up the
manual of the c64 and started to type the sample programs from the manual , the \"little balloon\"
one for those who remember, which i never get working :)

Wraggster: What projects/coding have you done previous to any Dreamcast programming?
Pascal Bosquet: I get involved in game programming by Francois. He teached me how to program with Blitz Basic
on the Amiga 1200. So i joined the \"Jean Pierre Sofware\" team , the aim of the group was to make
funny games nearly unplayable for non group members :)
Beside accountant and management programs ( Visual Basic , Lotus Notes) , i get involved
in emulation. My main project is a Sega MasterSystem/GameGear/SG-1000 emulator for Windows called
\"Past-O-Rama\" (www.system16.com/pastorama). I've started this for keeping my C skills and because
i was intrigated how emulators works.
Next this i've realized the w32 ports of TGEMU and SystemC2 emulators from Charles McDonald (http://cgfm2.emuviews.com)
.Finaly,i've done some tries with 68000 assembler and the Genesis/Megadrive

Wraggster: What made you choose to do a emulate the Sg1000 ?
Pascal Bosquet: I'm a Sega Freak, and i never get a chance to get a real SG-1000 in my hands. So I decided with
to emulated it with Past-O-Rama . And during the programming, i have discovered how nice this system is
Next getting the emu working under w32, i decided to port it on the Dreamcast as i wanted to
play SG-1000 on a big tv :)
I finaly , it think it was funny to play the first ever SEGA console on their last one.

Wraggster: How did you start and what programs did you use to start coding for Dreamcast?
Pascal Bosquet:First thing was to get a coder cable ( thanks again Steph ;) ) ,as i'm not good at soldering.
I have not been lucky to get a broadband (if you sale one contact me :) ). so i'm still working with
my serial using Cygwin under w98.
I've started playing with the samples from libdream ( Ta and Ghetto play ) as i was wanting to
use TA coz the 320*240 res with the frame buffer was too ugly on my vgabox to my mind..
And the TA was not much used at that time too for emulators
(i think that smeg kenseiden preview was the first one, correct me if i'm wrong :)).
Now i'm playing with Kos and will soon port Dream-O-Rama to.

Wraggster: Can you give us a status update on your emulator and do you plan anu update to it?
Pascal Bosquet:Well since last release nothing has much advance. I've fixed some compatibility issue but nothing
worthing a release. I'd like to add PAL, keyboard support as Dream-O-Rama is planned to be
updated in the future.

Wraggster: Can you tell us how complex programming for the DReamcast is and do you use any in-house created tools for the DC or just KOS specific tools?
Pascal Bosquet: No , programming on DC is not that hard using wonderful tools like Kos and libdream. When you know some C ,
you can program on the DC. Dream-O-Rama is just a libdream 0.95 program.

Wraggster: Do you have any new projects in the pipeline?
Pascal Bosquet:Next to the release of Dream-o-Rama , i've worked on a project called \"DreamBeret\" which was supposed to
be a Green Beret/Rush'n Attack emulator for the DC. But the project is freezed.
We're now working hard on a 2d platform game for the GBA and there'll be a Dreamcast version.
I also got people asking me to add sms/gg driver from Past-O-Rama to Dream-O-Rama , but i'm a smeg fan :)
So this will not come soon as i prefer working on something non existant.

Wraggster: Whats your opinion of the new super consoles like X-box,Gamecube,Game Boy Advance and the Playstation 2?
Pascal Bosquet:As i'm a oldschool gamer (i mean 2d games), i love the GBA as it's a really awesome piece of hardware .
For the Ngc, i just hope that Nintendo 'll be a little more creative and less childish than in the past.
But with the presence of the Sonic Team deving on it, i'll surely buy one.
The X-Box looks great too and with a exclusive Panzer Dragoon coming , it'll be hard to resist

Wraggster: Which console looks the best for homebrew developing?
Pascal Bosquet: Dreamcast and GBA are two nice systems for \"amateur\" dev. I don't know much about Ps2 as i'm not interested
The fact that NGC got a special disk, it'll be hard to program on it, X-box programming will just be
pc like programming.
For me, the Dreamcast is the best home system for deving , that's the only system allowing to boot amateur
programs without any modifications or special hardware. And the scene is very active this last time ( the ml is
very active)

Wraggster: What are your favourite games for every system you have owned?
Pascal Bosquet:Commodore64 : ZackMcKraken , Skate or die
Amiga : FlashBack, Lotus Esprit , Super Obliteration
Megadrive : the super shinobi,super monaco gp,sonic, streets of rage2,thunderforce 3 & 4,Shining force
MasterSystem : Golden axe warrior , alex kidd in miracle world, ninja gaiden, shinobi
Snes : Actraiser , Super Ghouls'n Ghost , Contra 3 (super probotector)
SegaSaturn : Daytona Usa,Thunderforce 5,Nights , Burning Rangers & Panzer dragoon series
DC : Crazy Taxi , Jet set Radio , Space Channel 5 , HOTD2 , Ferrari F355,Samba de Amigo and virtua Tennis
phantasy star ,Tony hawk pro skater, and there's many others :)
GBA : Fzero and Castelvania

Wraggster: Your thoughts on the Dreamcast/GBA Emulation/Development Scene and how can it be improved?
Pascal Bosquet: The DC scene is great and very active and don't see how it can be better.
For the GBA , there's lots of people working on great projects and the best is still to come.