Guillermo Amaral will be giving a talk on "Open Source Retro Video Game Console" at SCALE 12X. The SCALE Team caught up with him to ask him about his presentation.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: Hi, I'm Guillermo "gamaral" Amaral. I'm an extremely handsome software engineer, weekend hardware hacker and closet web comic pixelator.
I started down the open-source road back in the late mid '90s. In fact I'm pretty sure I owe my professional career to open-source software; I had learned to program from a young age, but I really got into it after I stubbled upon Linux and GCC, man I would stay up for hours drinking coffee and reading C code. Just knowing you could get the source for any program in your system and then tweak it and bend it to your will... It blew my mind. I'm pretty sure that's when I went just a little insane.
More recently, I've worked on and promoted a few well known open-source projects; but nowadays I mostly focus on my own top secret project called Marshmallow Game Engine, which isn't really much of a secret since I keep telling people about it.
Q: You're giving a talk on "Open Source Retro Video Game Console." Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: A fun talk about what goes into a homebrew video game console's firmware, that and a nice history lesson about other open game consoles out in the wild.
I'll also touch on application specific Linux distributions, like how you can go about creating a custom-fit distro for your next Raspberry Pi project.
Q: Is this your first visit to SCALE? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: Oh no, this isn't my first SCALE rodeo, I think my first was 7x but I may be mistaken. All I can say is that It's pretty fun, I look forward to it every year! I get to see and hang out with a lot of my old friends and make new ones, that and the talks are always top notch. I hear there's gonna be one about a homebrew game console running on a Raspberry Pi, I can't wait.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: Oh no, I've babbled enough. But if any of your readers would like to ask me a question or just to chat for a bit, don't be afraid to walk up to me and say hi.
[SCALE Team interview by Larry Cafiero]