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With a little luck, this section will soon be jam-packed with various features. For now, however, check out the interview with top GBA emulator creator, FluBBa:
Interview with FluBBa
Q: When did you start programming?
A: I think it was sometime around 1985 when I started writing Basic programs on my ZX Spectrum.
Q: What programming languages are you fluent in?
A: Mostly Assembler (68k, 6502 & ARM), but at work I also use C. I can probably hack something together in Basic as well if I have to!
Q: What inspired you to start coding emulators?
A: To cut a long story short, I tried for a year to make a Zelda remake for the Amiga. When we had only gotten half-way I found out about emulators, and saw Juan Antonio Gomez Galvez's Master System emulator on the Amiga. I thought I could do the same thing but with the NES instead.
Q: Why the GBA?
A: I've always liked the SNES even though I've never owned one, and I thought the GBA would be like a portable SNES (and it almost is). So I bought one, then I heard about PocketNES and took a look at it hoping to be able to optimize it, as I had coded a NES emulator for the Amiga, but it probably took a year or so before I understood the GBA enough to do some real work on it.
Q: What inspired you to start working on PocketNES?
A: Two things: first I wanted a working project to begin with, so I just could change stuff to learn about the GBA; and, second, I had already built a NES emulator for the Amiga.
Q: What projects are you currently working on?
A: Nothing new at the moment, we'll see in the coming weeks.
Q: Have you coded for any other gaming systems? If not, would you ever consider doing so?
A: For consoles, I've only done a little test program for the NES; otherwise it's mostly been demos for the Amiga and C64.
Q: What are your thoughts on the current state of the scene?
A: It's definitly slowing down, which is a shame as the GBA is one of the easiest machines to learn some console programming skills on.
Q: What do you do for a living?
A: I work for a company that developes a network video recorder. We handle conversion, distribution and the storage of digital video, mainly for surveilance.
Q: How's the weather in Sweden?
A: Right now it's snowing again.
Q: What do you like to do when you're not coding?
A: Hmm, when I'm not coding? Play some games or mostly watch movies. Right now I'm also watching some Lost.
Q: What gaming systems do you currently own?
A: Let's see: NES, Amiga 4000, Game Boy Pocket, GBC, GBA, GBA SP, Game Boy player, PS1 Debugging Station, Dreamcast, PS2, GP32, NDS... And the C64 is in a box somewhere!
Q: What are your favourite games of all time?
A: I was reminded yesterday of Skies of Arcadia by Edge, which must be one of the most complete RPGs ever—I think I spent around 80 hours on the Dreamcast version. Rez was also a masterpiece, in my mind, because I really like shoot-em-ups and music games. Also: Super Monkey Ball, WipeOut 2097, Half Life, Ikaruga, Soul Calibur, DOA2, Daytona 2 (Arcade), Worms, Phantasy Star, Bomberman, DDR, TMNT (Arcade), Twin Cobra (Arcade).
Q: What games are you playing nowadays?
A: I've played through GTA: San Andreas, which I liked very much, and I've also played through Halo 2, which felt more like Halo 1.5 or something—bleh. I also completed Feel the Magic on the DS, which was quite a strange experience—it made me really smile a couple of times!
Q: What are your thoughts on the current state of the world?
A: I'm hopeful. I think (and sincerely hopes) that the internet can be used a giant P2P network for knowledge about all kind of things and not only to pirate the latest warez. I visit www.groklaw.net quite often to see how it goes with IBM and SCO; they use the knowledge and time of a lot of visitors to bring forth information about the case and Unix/Linux and report all the information that SCO (or IBM) don't want to show but is still public info.
Q: What do you think of the new GBAFan?
A: It looks really professional—I'm looking forward to the official opening. (Although I think you should probably add scaled images for PCEAdvance!)
Q: Thanks for your time. Any exclusive information you wish to share?
A: Nothing extraordinary, I'm working on my homepage, trying to put up some (un)interesting stuff there.