| INTERVIEW WITH DARKMAZDA |
By SAV2880
1. You've been running your own web page for quite some time now. What part of the job do you find most enjoying?
Well Scott, I think that trying to give people the best/fastest news on the web, and trying to do something for the emulation scene. I have been in the emulation scene for about 3-4 years and I have seen many many news sites. I love visiting DavesClassics, Zophar's Domain and Archaic-Ruins, which are the classic emulation sites that started it all. But new sites are popping up every day and more people joining the emulation scene which makes a competition for sites. Couple of them are Emulation Sphere owned by Adrox, Retrogames owned by Atila, and Emulation Camp owned by Zoop which are all big and popular right now. I think I'm on the lower side if I was to rank my self for my website. These other guys get about 2 to 10 times more visitors than I do, and I respect them alot for what they do. I try my best at everything but I guess popularity is hard to get.
2. A while ago, you announced that you were working on a translation for > Rockman and Forte ... how is that progressing?
Well we got about 99% done but we couldn't get the CD data base part because we didn't have any ASM Hackers, we had everything translated but couldn't get the CD DATABASE part done cuz no ASM Hackers. We have asked many people to see if they could ASM hack for us but everyone has rejected us and we just left the translation at 99% or Rockman/Forte (e) version .99
3. (Other then yours, of course!), what emulation web sites do you visit everyday?
Our Dear Friend, EmulationHQ, Zophar's Domain, DavesClassics, Emu24x, Emulation Sphere and other ones I didn't mention.
4. What aspects of emulation bring you the most enjoyment personally?
That's a really tough, I guess playing the Classic Video games like NES or SNES (Which I like to play the most) ) I Sometimes play N64 or PSX emulators but I really do not personally like them. It just gets boring for some reason, and I rather play on the N64, so go buy the stuff ) But NES, SNES and the systems that we can't buy right now are really fun to play and its not as boring for some reason. I really love _Demo_ and the ZSNES Team for their wonderful work for Zsnes. Gary and Jeremy also for Snes9x. There are many emulator authors out there that really good and trying to give people the best emulator out there. I wish them good luck )
5. Similarly, what aspects of it tick you off the most?
I guess the lamers that are popping up on the Emulation Scene. There was a huge growth in the emulation scene when "bleem!" and "UltraHLE" were out. I'm really proud for the emulator authors to release such a powerful emulator, but it just gets more and more people looking for roms and lamers complaining about the emulator and what it can do and can not do. The second thing I would like to say that ticks me off is hating people for what they do. I see lots of people not really liking Dave from DavesClassics. But people must understand, Dave is a really neat and cool guy. I've talked to him many times, he might act weird in channels on IRC but when you talk to him by yourself, he's just an ordinary cool guy that works for his emulation site. He has helped me through my bad times and good times, I try to help him out also. I guess people gets the wrong picture about him because he owns a big emulation news site that he must be controlling people. I have visiting Dave's Video game Classics for a long time now (3 years), and I would like Dave to continue his great work on his site. This goes for almost any emulation news site, webmasters spend their time updating news for you so you could have the latest in the emulation scene and Dave has done for 3 years, people should look at him differently. Since he gets about roughly 40000-50000 visitors per day, he has gotten lots of flame e-mail and lots of complaints, Dave told me that he wanted to quit because of these flamers and complainers. But you know what, he didn't give up. He kept on updating like usual, thats why he has gotten so far in the Emulation News scene. Because of Dave's Video Game Classics, I have my site up right now. Another thing that ticks me off in Emulation is when you get E-mail saying "Where do i get this rom?" "can you send me this rom?" I mean i can't send out roms thru E-mail or answer people's e-mails on where to get it. Its just wrong.
6. What emulators (or other games) do you play most often?
NES, NESticle, SNES, ZSnes, and SNES9X, NeoGeo, NeoRageX. I Just love to play RPGs, I have finished most of the RPG's for SNES (Especially SquareSoft!)
7. How could one contact you to help with your web site?
Well that's pretty simple, E-mailing me or just chatting with me on IRC!
8. If you could sum up something you want everyone to know right now in a sentence ... well, go for it!
If you would like to make an Emulation Website ( News/Roms etc..) #1 Thing I would like to tell you is have fun. If you want to make a news site, go for it! It would really be hard to be on top just like Dave and Zophar and atila. Roms sites are getting worse in my opinion, they just put up banners and no working links. If you would like to get roms, visit IRC for once, stop looking on the web, there are tons of people on IRC that are willing to help look for roms. #1 thing, do not e-mail webmasters on how to get roms because you won't get them thru e-mail.
Throw any other comments on that you want.
I would like to thank these people for helping me, supporting me through out my Emulation Scene. #1 is Leviathan and Brian (Admins of EmulationWorld giving me a job for emulationworld and hosting me), Emulation News webmasters/staff members (Atila, Dave, Zoop, Zach, bwb, Peter, SAV2880, Spinner_8, XiP, _Bnu, Zophar, Nitro187, and others I didn't mention and you know who you guys are), My DMD Staff members that came through since I started my site (epidemik for hosting me on peon.net, Geechyguy, DtK, Shad0wRYe, Slayn, TruPlaya, WiNGnuT, DienyDDa, _Athena, Apocalypz, sennomo, DarkHack, and others that I haven't mentioned), and the Emulator Authors (_Demo_ and the Zsnes team, Jeremy and the Snes9x Team, Sardu, Marat for basically starting Emulators, RealityMan and others), the Translation People (Stories, MagitekKn, Linachan, Taichou, DarkHack, TruPlaya, maht, SoM2Freak, RPGe Team) and most of all my Emulation Friends that has supported me through (Some are ProtoMan, people from #DarkMazda, doraemon`, c003y, sandypup, romar, Taichou, AirZoom and lots and lots more). Thank you very much!
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