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Interview with: The Spoutnick team

Homepage: http://www.spoutnickteam.com

Date: 2001

The Interview

Wraggster: Can you tell me a little about yourselfs?

Pascal: my name is Pascal Bosquet, i'm 25 and Belgian. I work as a IT since i get my diploma (june 98). i like cinema , cartoons (Futurama,simpsons ,...). My fav console ever is the Megadrive/Genesis. I'm a Sega freak , as Sega remain my fav game company since my childhood. I remember playing in arcade to Shinobi,Out-Run, Wonderboy,... and now, i'm playing with Virtua Tennis , phantasy star online and crazy
taxi

Francois: I was born on 1975 in belgium. I'm married (with Christel). I got my first console in 1983, it was an Atari 2600. Since I played PACMAN, i don't have stop myself playing video games, especially all those classics from the 80's.... I've met Pascal at school, we're pals for a long time. Now, I work as main coder in small pharmaceutical group. It's a good quiet job, that pays good

Christel: I'm 27 years old, belgian too. As Francois said, we're married for 2 years. I'm not a video games freak at all, I've made artisic study (les beaux-arts in french), and i give a helpfull hand to Pascal and Francois for the look and the design of their productions... I've designed a few logos for local companies, and for now I work as graphist in a small company. I'm afraid that's the only question i'm able answer...

Wraggster: Whats your programming history?

Pascal: i got a IT diploma. Get involved in game coding by Francois who teached me the basics of Blitz basic on a Amiga1200. last year, i've released the first version of Past-O-Rama which was at that time the only free SG-1000 emulator for w32 with Sega-Emu. Now, i've add support for the MasterSystem and GameGear. I've also done w32 port of two emu from Charles McDonald : Tgemu and SystemC2.

Francois: I got the same diploma as Pascal,i've made some small games on the amiga in
Blitz basic with Pascal. But lack of time made that i can't code anymore.... Pascal is single! he got all the times he wants to make fab' emu (and he's better than me)

Wraggster: What projects are you currently doing?

Pascal: I'm working on Past-O-Rama and now Dream-O-Rama

Francois: Working on the design of the next Spoutnick Team projects...

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

Pascal: I really like the DC, it's really a great console which is worthing its price. I get mine for ages (December 1998), and i've followed all his short commercial life. Being able to program on it was like a dream. And several elite coders as Marcus,Dan,Andrew,.. bring this come true using 100% free tools !!!! then, i don't have hesitate too much

Francois: We think that working on console is, in a certain way, easier than on PC. It's like the Amiga : every one got the same hardware configuration, no probs with video cards or sound cards...

Wraggster: What future projects if any are you looking into?

Pascal: We've just decided what's our next project will be. But we prefer not to announce it as it's too early (we have first to tried if it's possible and we don't want to make promises that we can not keep). I can says for sure that'll not be a sms/gg emulator as i've tried smeg preview and it really "kick ass".
i don't see any needs for another sms emu for the Dc. There's already dreamsms, smeg ,sms+ and an unamed one. so we prefer working on something new...

Francois: As Pascal said, it will not be Dream-o-Rama vol #2 : SMS/GG... But stay tuned on our site for more hot news ! You can espect another high-quality release

Wraggster: Why choose the SG1000 console to emulate?

Pascal: the SG-1000 was the first sega console, so i found funny to play the first sega console on their last one. SG-1000 was my learning project for the emulation programming. And with Past-O-Rama, i've discovered what a nice system the sg1k is, i really like ! there's good conversion of classic games like zaxxon,hero,qbert,.. and playing those games on a big tv is much more tasty that on my pc I'd like to get the real hardware now , but it's nearly impossible , so it's a little my way to get mine

Francois: nothing to add

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

Pascal: I think that the DC emu scene is just at its beginning , now a lots of 8bits systems are very well emulated, there's still a lack of 16bits systems but those required some low level coding for working well So it'll take some time...

Francois: For my part, i'm sure we'll see many more good emu and original projects on it (Marbol from ganksoft for example)

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

Pascal: I don't know much about the psx hardware so i can not judge the difficulty of a psx emu. Bleemcast is a great piece of software. But those men got paid for it and work at least 8hours a day on. Not really the same case as amateur coders.

Francois: Bleemcast is very impressive but i think it should be released a year ago, i m afraid that it comes a little bit late....