1. Introduce yourself please
Well I am Atani.. My real name is Mike Dunston. I live near San francisco CA. Working for a large Computer company out here :). I write many ports of some of the dos and linux genesis or similar emulators.

2. What's the name of this computer company?
Sorry, i would rather not say that...

3. Is it because your relationship with emulation?
Somewhat... A lot of people on the internet know of this company and its various products. I just would rather keep the company name anonymous for these reasons. If i worked for a smaller company then yes i would give out the name and a webaddress for it.

4. Do you think emulation is a "grey area" ?
Somewhat. It is quite well defined in the area of Roms, but not on the emulators themselves. I think the emulators are fully legal in all aspects. I think of the emulators just the same as i would think of a program such as Winzip. its just another authors program to help others.

5. When were your first contacts with emulation? During BBS times?
About three years ago or more, i would think sometime around 96 or so. I started playing with Nesticle and Genecyst and other emulators that i found on the net. It was at that time i decided i wanted to write some kind of emulator, but i never did, not until recently. And yes there were some fun things i found on the various BBS' i used to call. Only a few of them had anything with emulation. It was mostly a new thing at the time for the console systems at the time... by consoles i mean NES and Genesis

6. Was Bloodlust a motivation to code emulators?
Not really.. i never really went to their websites until very recently. I only had the software for the longest times. And to tell the truth, i didnt even know who wrote the software i was playing with :)

7. What do you think of Bloodlust's "violent" and hoobyst approach to programming ?
Its quite intersting and sometimes entertaining. I am not totally for the complete "violence" in their software. But i must say that sometimes they do come up with something quite interesting and different. ahh.. Well being the hobbyst programmers that they are that is also really cool :) I actually do programming for a living :)

8. What was your first emulation project?
Well my first project was probably my SegaCD emulator that never was finished. And that version will never be finished. It was never released because it didnt do enough to bother releasing it. I hope to re-write all of the functionality of that emulator into SegaEMU in the future.

9. Well , that should boost the ISO area . That's very near the warez ambience . What's your view on that ?
I do not support the ISO area or the warez areas. In my emulators i will only support actual CDs.. of course this can be defeated as well with an ISO being put on a CD.. But this should at least slow them down a little bit.

10. . Is difficult to code SEGA systems emulators? There are enough docs about their architecture?
Well some of the systems are easier than the others. SMS/GG/Genesis all have lots of docs on them. The 32x and SegaCD however have very little docs publically available. This is mostly the reason that no emulators for these systems have shown up until quite recently. There is still no emulator for the SegaCD systems that allows you to play any games, or even utilize the bios images.

11. Where did you get your docs about SegaCD?
I have searched the net for most of them. I also have the MegaCD development kit which also helps greatly in deciphering most of the info. I am also hoping to put out a publicly available document about the SegaCD/MegaCD once i have my emulator able to display more of the graphics and the such.

12. Do working at your company ease the way to get these docs ?
No. I had all of the docs before i started working at the company.

13. Besides the systems which are planned to be available on SegaEMU, SEGA Saturn wont be available? Why?
I have decided not to support Sega Saturn due to i dont actually own the console system, nor do i own any games for it. So i have no real need to emulate the system for myself. That and there are plenty of Sega Saturn emulators that are in the works and have quite some progress already.

14. Do you have the ability to program fully developed homebrewn games and if so , have the intention/time on doing so ?
I do not have the abilities at this time to put together a homebrewn game. If i did though i would probably have my wife help in doing the graphics and then i would put together an RPG of sorts...

15. Wife ? Nice ... litlle atanis around the computer?
hehee... Yes i am married. Got married in December last year. And no there are no little ones running around.. We are planning on enjoying being married for a couple years and then have a kid or two :)

16. Where does "Atani" (the nick) come from ?
I got my nick name from J.R.R Tolkein Books.. The Hobbit, and The Lord Of The Rings

17. Well, as we can see you like RPG... what are your preferred consoles/games?
I dont really have a preference on the console. But i really love the LUNAR games from the good old SegaCD and recently the PSX. I also like other RPGs but i dont remember them all now :)

18. When we asked about "grey area", you said that emulators are like another programs such as WinZip, but WinZip is shareware... what's your opinion about non-free emulators?
I prefer not to have to pay for an emulator. At least not the prices that some authors are charging. Esp for windows emulators. Some authors are charging more than $10 just to let you see the emulator, they dont offer any demo versions. I think that pay emulators are pretty much a waste of time and they are not good because of the issues that come up like Sony Vs Bleem and other similar cases. If an author wants to charge say $5 for their emulator just to cover some of the development costs that is ok. But free ones are better

19. Programs are considered intelectual property in many countries . BIOS is such property . Do you think every emulator kinda breaks into that "property" ?
I believe those emulators that require the user to download the bios images would be yes. But those that do have a 'bios faking' mechanism then no. Those that use that technique would be creating a 'clone' of the bios, which is not the same as the original bios.

20. But you can't fake them without studying them , can you ?
Sometimes yes. With some of the documentation that is freely available on the internet you can fake the bios without ever seeing the real thing.

21. Can you explain for our readers how to dump a console BIOS?
That is something that i dont even really know how to start with. Mostly because it ranges from system to system. Sometimes you can use a device similar to ProAction Replay. But usually i would open the console up and attach a chip clip the the eprom and pull the data with an eeprom burner unit.

22. Some chip's data are not spread sequentially through chips .. that will make it harder even with an EEPROM burner. Did you write extra little programs to help developing your emulators?
Yes, some of the little programs i have written would do things such as assemble roms from split formats, test the graphics engines, the gui, etc...

23. Will you release these programs for the public?
no.. The functionality of these programs has been integrated into the emulators themselves. Except for the graphic test progams. These will not leave here because of their nature. They serve no purpose to others without access to the source code for the emulators.

24. We couldn't help to see the "dir" above . Are you a ROM collector ?
Yes. I have many games for many systems. Most of which i do own the original carts for. But that dir command was for my emulator programming.. i am traversing the directory structure of the source code looking for a file :)

25. When I asked for the interview, you said "i have plenty of time... i am working on Generator32 .15 now so :)". What we can expect?
Well... Generator32 .15 is in the works still. I have put in some preliminary GUI into the next release. It will be the good old fashion gui that most programmers do not use anymore. But since i like working with some older styles of programming i am going to use this method. More on this shortly though. The next version of Generator32 should be out in a few days :0

26. Why are you porting some emulators (Genital, MCHE, Generator) for Windows?
I am wanting to try something new. This is the best way for me to see how others have done some things as well. I use the information that i gather from the ports to further enhance my emulator and the ports. I prefer to port emulators for the Sega systems but MCHE has nintendo systems in it. I was kinda interested in doing something with this so thats why i ported that one :)

27. Where you get time to develope these emulators? Are you alone?
Yes. I work alone on the various projects. I spend most of my free time playing with them on the computer and trying to get some more ideas on the various projects which are in the works.

28. Does your wife complain about that ? We know many programmer's wifes do ;)
Sometimes.. She usually is sitting at her computer chatting or playing with Photoshop... We kinda have it pretty well with that aspect...

29. Is she a programmer or designer of some sort ?
She does mostly graphics design. Not really a programmer.

30. How many beta testers Atani Software has?
We have about 10 or so. Most of the beta testers are various emu news site maintainers :)

31. Besides MCHE and Genital, there are plans to port another emulator such as DarcNES?
There already is a Win32 version of DarcNES, so no on that one :) Others maybe, depends on the system and the amount of work required to port it.

32. What's your preferred Genesis emulator? ;)
right now Genital :)

33. Steve Snake is famous because he sometimes adds some texts in his emulators sources. Are you another programmer who likes to comment the source?
I do put comments in the source that i use for knowing what i am doing in the code if that is what you mean. As for putting text that gets into the source and can be used to ID the exe even after its built or modified then no.

34. Do you think that netplay for Genesis is so far away?
Not really.. i have about 1/2 of it done with my plugin for SegaEMU already.

35. Netplay including internet support?
Yes...

36. Do you plan to use emulation as a "exposition place" to get a job into some game company or emulation just for fun?
Emulation is mostly for fun.. I have the job that i want now :) I get paid well for programming and i get to travel :)

37. What do you think integration with recently launched systems will do to emulation (i.e. Dreamcast's Sega/NEC Emulation) ? Last blow to death ? Finally getting 100% public coverage and therefore leading into warez ?
I do not like the emulation of the later system. I dont totally agree with n64 or dreamcast emulation. However i am not against these types of emulators. It just shows that there is a lot of talent in the emulation world as a whole. And yes it will probably lead to warez and that i dont like.

38. Who is to blame ? Exposure or our own egoistic personality by demanding emulation to be our little secret ?
I am not going to point the finger on this one. Mostly because it is everyones fault on these issues.