Exophase is a newcomer to the PSP scene and what an entrance, to release a Full Speed GameBoy Advance emulator on your first day is an accomplishment like no other and the response from all corners of the PSP Scene has been breathtaking. So what better way to get to know more is for the webmaster of DCEmu to come out of retirement to interview Exophase.

So check out our Interview site to read one of my best interviews to date and a real insight into one of the new stars of the PSP Scene.

Check out the Interview at DCEmu Interviews and give your feedback on the interview ...

Introduction

Exophase is a newcomer to the PSP scene and what an entrance, to release a Full Speed GameBoy Advance emulator on your first day is an accomplishment like no other and the response from all corners of the PSP Scene has been breathtaking. So what better way to get to know more is for the webmaster of DCEmu to come out of retirement to interview Exophase.

Heres the latest DCEmu Interview:

Wraggster: Can you tell us where were you born, where you live,etc.?

Exophase: Born in Cleveland OH, USA. Right now I'm in Bloomington Indiana.

Wraggster: What qualifications do you have?

Exophase:Bachelors in computer science, going for a Masters at the moment.. no real work experience, although I've done a lot for the retro game creation system "MegaZeux."

Wraggster: What made you get into computers/consoles?

Exophase:I didn't actually own a computer until I was around 12. It's difficult to explain why, but long before that point I had a strong desire to know how computers work and how I could work with them.
As soon as I got my first (a Pentium 75MHz machine) I wanted to figure out how to program, by
naively opening up random executables in notepad and staring at awe at the mess of characters
that I thought someone must have hand inputed to make this thing. Anyway, I guess you could say
I was always interested in computers in some way.

As far as consoles go, that's pretty typical for all of us, although I didn't own an NES when everyone else did. First I had was the original Gameboy back in 1991 - someone let my mom play Tetris and after that she just had to have one. Eventually I got an NES and the other consoles (at budget prices) followed, like TG16 (good times..) and SNES at the very end of its lifetime.

Wraggster: What projects/coding have you done previous to your GBA Emulator for the PSP?

Exophase:Aside from projects for school (some of them kinda big and scary, like operating systems) I've mainly just worked on MegaZeux, as mentioned previously. gpSP is my first real emulator.

Wraggster: What inspired you to code a GBA Emulator to the PSP and what difficulties did you have getting it to run properly ?

Exophase:I wanted to do a GBA emulator because I figured it could be done, but that it'd take more than just a straight port of VBA. I've been interested in dynarec for a long time and from what I knew about ARM (GBA's CPU) I figured it'd be a great candidate for dynarec due to the large amount of decoding overhead necessary in interpreting it (at least in ARM mode, not so much in
Thumb mode). MIPS (PSP's CPU) was also an attractive target for a RISC recompiler. I had a lot of
other crazy ideas for GBA emulation involving the video code that mostly thinned out, I'm not sure
how much any of them would have worked out. Anyway, GBA seemed like one of the more in demand platforms to be emulated on PSP, and it'd make PSP that more comparable to DS which has native GBA playing capabilities.

Of course, there have been many difficulties, not much about this project was straightforward for
me. I spent hours comparing my debugger to the debugger of one of three other emulators (depending on the game), trying to find where mine goes wrong. Of course, I would have had a much harder time without such mature emulators to compare against. This was all on the PC, long before an initial PSP build was even made. I was always pretty intimidated about moving to PSP because I knew it'd be that much more difficult to debug. I only got a dynarec running on it by doing it in a very systematic fashion, starting with a rather weak but more platform independant approach that wasn't too difficult to port to MIPS, then eventually tuning the MIPS code into what it is now. It's
pretty similar to the approach StrmnNrmn took with Daedalus.

Wraggster: Can the Dynarec be used in any other Emulators ?

Exophase:It might be possible to use it for other platforms that use ARM7TDMI, although the memory interface would have to be revised, as well as the translation mapping functions. Moving to ARM9 would be a bit more work and anything with an MMU would be a headache as well. For other CPUs I don't think this would do much for anyone, even as a reference.

This is all assuming that MIPS is a target. Other platforms can be targeted (as x86 and MIPS are
now), but because of how the dynarec is designed it works best when the target platform has
significantly more registers than the one you're trying to emulate.

Wraggster: Can Full Speed and Full Compatability be accessed with your emulator in the future ?

Exophase:Hm, I don't think any emulator really achieves full compatability. I know the compatability can probably be improved... right now I'm not handling self modifying code as robustly as I should be, changing that might help things, I don't really know yet. I'm also not handling some things like code executed from VRAM. I know for sure that there are a number of dynarec bugs; the interpreter
has much better compatability (and is of course much slower). I'd say the interpreter has around
85-90% compatability, so hopefully one day the dynarec will approach that.

As for speed.. there are still things I can do to improve it. There are some techniques that I
believe will decrease the size of emited code which can improve speed massively if it's enough
(anything to improve icache performance). For games that use the BIOS heavily or games that use ...

Alexisonfire posted this news/release:

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments
via slasher ...

News via GTA Portable.com

...

Seems the PR for Microsoft misstepped in their elucidation of the 12-month exclusivity deal struck with EA Sports and Konami for FIFA and Pro-Evolution Soccer, respectively. PES (also known as Winning Eleven) producer Shingo Takatsuka called Microsoft out, saying their "presentation was misleading... We never said exclusive for one year on the next-gen platforms. We said this year. We were agreed that it was this year." We all know repeating your point means you're either firm in your resolve or very angry about an agreement being misconstrued.

Microsoft's wicked claims have caused trouble for Konami and even Sony (confusion about the announcement, most likely). Takatsuka clarified that the 360 version of Winning Eleven is exclusive until the end of 2006 (a PS3 version is in the works for an estimated spring of 2007 release). FIFA may be in the same boat, although EA hasn't released any official announcements. Well Microsoft, you caused quite a ruckus, but your attempts to confuse and mislead consumers and developers were in vain! Although it was most certainly not intentional, it's still a pretty lame move. A tip of the hat, you do not get. ...

The good and knowledgeable SuicideNinja upped a very clever post and has given us the opportunity to write about it. Basically, the boomerang concept controller may have been a smarter angle to go for the PS3 than everyone gave it credit for. At the time of its unveiling, we weren't aware of the motion-sensor going into it and thought the rumble feature would still be intact. Things change with time. Now, waving the boomerang controller around would definitely make a more comfortable tilt-motion feature than the Dual Shock 2 design. As SuicideNinja says, for steering cars in the appropriate games, it would be a pretty good fit.

Sadly, this revelation can't save the dropped design now. Or can it? Petitioning for it to be released as a separate accessory may be within the realm of possibility. Aside from racing or driving games, would the boomerang design be worthwhile? The "steering wheel" likeness doesn't really make a big splash against any other type of game. It's most appropriate for racing games and quite possibly flight sims. Still, that was a fantastic epiphany on SuicideNinja's part and now, what do you all think? Did we bury the boomerang prematurely or did we save ourselves from a junky controller? ...

via Greenbay

Video game makers usually find themselves marketing to a young audience when they launch a new product. But with video games coming out that aim to help baby boomers with their aging brains, the marketing game plan may be changing.

Consider the introduction of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, ($20, all ages), released earlier this year for use with the hand-held Nintendo DS device.

Brain Age was the first of a planned series of brain games from Nintendo. It includes word and number puzzles, connect-the-dots exercises and other challenges. Most of the activities are timed. When the player is finished, the game issues a "brain age" that is tracked on a graph to show progress over the weeks and months the brain-exercise regimen is completed. The goal is for the brain age to be at least equal to or below the player's actual age.

The game taps into a growing body of medical research suggesting that brain teasers and problem-solving games can improve memory and brain function in older people, even those with dementia.

For Brain Age, Nintendo is shifting gears on its marketing and advertising strategy by contacting AARP, the nation's largest senior citizens advocacy organization, the Discovery Channel and magazines such as Health, Women's Health and Redbook.

Interest in brain exercise could revolutionize the video-game industry, says Nintendo of America's Perrin Kaplan. "It's kind of already starting," she said.

Other game makers have begun to cater to such interests with the popular Sudoku. Ubisoft recently released Go! Sudoku ($30) for the Sony PlayStation Portable game system, and Sudoku Fever (Global Star, $20) has more than 100,000 puzzles of varying difficulty to play on Nintendo's older game system, the Game Boy Advance. Also out is Ultra Sudoku & Ultra Kakuro (Abacus, for PCs, $30) and, Dr. Sudoku (Mastiff Games, for Game Boy Advance, $20).

Sudoku and a more far-reaching puzzler, Perplex City, a real-world treasure hunt that delivers clues through puzzle cards and Web sites, "are really getting some traction now," says John Davison, editorial director for Ziff Davis' video game magazines, including Electronic Gaming Monthly. "(Nintendo's) Brain Age, I'm sure, will be a huge phenomenon. The challenge is getting people to try it, because once they do, they'll be hooked. ... It taps in nicely to the emerging puzzle-culture thing that's gaining some momentum."

Meanwhile, researchers are attempting to quantify what effects games could have on aging. The Alzheimer's Association recommends puzzles as therapy because some studies have suggested they might improve memory, attention and problem-solving while staving off mental decline and, perhaps, reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

The themes of "brain food" and periodic mental breaks are being emphasized as methods of stress relief to the female-skewed audience of MSN Games, which offers puzzle games such as Hexic, Bejeweled, Mozaki Blocks, Bespelled and Scrabble Blast!

Beyond stress reduction, these games amount to the type of "brain food" that can combat loss of memory and brain function, Hall says.

"Playing online games can be a new and effective approach for getting brain food," she says, "and this fits seamlessly into the digital lifestyle so many of us lead." ...

via Greenbay

Video game makers usually find themselves marketing to a young audience when they launch a new product. But with video games coming out that aim to help baby boomers with their aging brains, the marketing game plan may be changing.

Consider the introduction of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, ($20, all ages), released earlier this year for use with the hand-held Nintendo DS device.

Brain Age was the first of a planned series of brain games from Nintendo. It includes word and number puzzles, connect-the-dots exercises and other challenges. Most of the activities are timed. When the player is finished, the game issues a "brain age" that is tracked on a graph to show progress over the weeks and months the brain-exercise regimen is completed. The goal is for the brain age to be at least equal to or below the player's actual age.

The game taps into a growing body of medical research suggesting that brain teasers and problem-solving games can improve memory and brain function in older people, even those with dementia.

For Brain Age, Nintendo is shifting gears on its marketing and advertising strategy by contacting AARP, the nation's largest senior citizens advocacy organization, the Discovery Channel and magazines such as Health, Women's Health and Redbook.

Interest in brain exercise could revolutionize the video-game industry, says Nintendo of America's Perrin Kaplan. "It's kind of already starting," she said.

Other game makers have begun to cater to such interests with the popular Sudoku. Ubisoft recently released Go! Sudoku ($30) for the Sony PlayStation Portable game system, and Sudoku Fever (Global Star, $20) has more than 100,000 puzzles of varying difficulty to play on Nintendo's older game system, the Game Boy Advance. Also out is Ultra Sudoku & Ultra Kakuro (Abacus, for PCs, $30) and, Dr. Sudoku (Mastiff Games, for Game Boy Advance, $20).

Sudoku and a more far-reaching puzzler, Perplex City, a real-world treasure hunt that delivers clues through puzzle cards and Web sites, "are really getting some traction now," says John Davison, editorial director for Ziff Davis' video game magazines, including Electronic Gaming Monthly. "(Nintendo's) Brain Age, I'm sure, will be a huge phenomenon. The challenge is getting people to try it, because once they do, they'll be hooked. ... It taps in nicely to the emerging puzzle-culture thing that's gaining some momentum."

Meanwhile, researchers are attempting to quantify what effects games could have on aging. The Alzheimer's Association recommends puzzles as therapy because some studies have suggested they might improve memory, attention and problem-solving while staving off mental decline and, perhaps, reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

The themes of "brain food" and periodic mental breaks are being emphasized as methods of stress relief to the female-skewed audience of MSN Games, which offers puzzle games such as Hexic, Bejeweled, Mozaki Blocks, Bespelled and Scrabble Blast!

Beyond stress reduction, these games amount to the type of "brain food" that can combat loss of memory and brain function, Hall says.

"Playing online games can be a new and effective approach for getting brain food," she says, "and this fits seamlessly into the digital lifestyle so many of us lead." ...

Moonlight has just released a new beta of Moonshell for the DS, Moonshell is a multmedia app that does just about everything for the DS.

Heres whats new:

MOD/MIDI/SPC/NSF/GBS plugin: Change sampling rate to 32768Hz. The over sampling was invalidated.
MIDI plugin: Linear interpolation when 16bitPCM sound font is used.
SPC plugin: The LPF characteristic was corrected.
Interpolation item was added to [ImagePlugin] section of global.ini. for the supplementation with the expansion reduction.
The bug that had failed in automatic detection of the enhancing memory built into M3CF/SD was corrected.

Download the beta here --> http://mdxonline.dyndns.org/archives/nds/ ...