Quote:Interview with ‘Expert’ & ‘AkumaX’ (Jackal, PSX Emulator) By : Mark ‘KILLZAT’ Jackson - 24/11/1999

With the recent discontinuation of several leading free PlayStation emulation projects and the overall domination of commercial ones that aren’t so hot, many of us felt cheated. Thankfully a whole new breed of free PSX emulators is now on the way and leading the pack is ‘Jackal’, a newer project by some relatively unknown authors, until know.
The main coder is ‘Expert’ who is assisted in other ways by his friend ‘AkumaX’, together they are helping to create a very promising emulator for the future. EmuForce decided to whip out some chocolate cookies and bait a trail for the team so that we might interview them; it worked!
Expert answers first followed by AkumaX, if only one reply then it’s just from Expert.

(1) Tell us a little about whom both of you are and what you do?

(Expert) I am Expert.I am from Greece.I am 19 years old and I study economics.
(AkumaX) Well, I'm AkumaX and I'm from Greece too! 23 years old and I'm studying mathematics in a local university. Just to add a note here, Expert is the Jackal programmer (the first really good hobby programmer I know from Greece, there's a real shortage of these people over here!), I just did and I'm maintaining the official Jackal site (). Also being a good friend to Expert.

(2) Jackal is reasonably new to the emulation scene yet clearly showed enough promise to get the PSEmu.com team interested, why?

(Expert) The web site (jackal.psemu.com) is the result of a good friendship with Tratax, nothing more.
(AkumaX) And the result of a conflict/misunderstanding in #psemu efnet, but that's long gone since Tratax so kindly offered us webspace and a domain at their server.

(3) Do you think Jackal will just end up being another dropped PSX emulator like PSEmuPro or will it keep going?
(Expert) Jackal will continue as long as it will keep me interested.
(AkumaX) It's just up to Expert. I currently don't have the knowledge to assist him in the coding phase.

(4) How are you progressing with the emulator, likely to see any commercial games running any time soon =)?

(Expert) It's very soon to speak for commercial games. There is a lot to be done like cdrom, mdec and more.
(AkumaX) No comment,that's a question only for Expert.

(5) Have either of you ever been involved in emulation before Jackal?
(Expert) Nope, Jackal is my first try in emulation scene. However I am a programmer for many years.
(AkumaX) I bet he is! And a real good one!

(6) On average how much time a week would each of you say you spent on it?
(Expert) About 4 hours per day. Let's say 25 hours per week in the last 3 month However I work on that project about 1,5 year in research..

(7) Hard work then?

(Expert) Pretty hard, to emulate a console system is truly harder that I thought.
(8) What do you think of commercial emulators such as 'bleem!' and that one for the Mac that I can never remember?

(Expert) Commercial emulators suck. Although these people have done a nice work emulation need to be free.
(AkumaX) Well, for me ‘bleem! v1.5’ is the version that ‘bleem! v1.0’ should have been. Too many problems and beta testing for a commercial emulator. But we must say that bleem! Confronted Sony and the whole emulation vs. legality matter,so they basically defended the whole emu community. We must at least acknowledge them this. As for the Virtual Gamestation emu for the Mac, well, they gave up to Sony at once so they don't even exist in my memory.
(9) Ever get worried about the almighty lawyer team at Sony coming to your houses at night and planting bombs to stop your project =)?

(Expert) Hehe, that would be fun enough!
(AkumaX) We had some problems with Sony and their BIOS file in the old jackal site but that's long gone. In the new site you can find only the demos Jackal currently runs and a sound file of the BIOS, so Sony has nothing illegal against us now.

(10) Finally, what would you both most like to see emulated in the future other than the Dreamcast and PSX2.. There’s still a lot of consoles left =)?

(Expert) Exactly, I am planning to make a psx2 emulator later so psx2 is what I care most.
(AkumaX) Well, for me, I'm still waiting a CPS2 emulator (hope someone cracks that encryption soon!). Dreamcast and PSX2? Let's wait to see PSX2 in the European market first!

EmuForce thanks both ‘Expert’ and ‘AkumaX’ for taking time out of their busy schedule to talk with us. We look forward to future versions of Jackal !