Retro Gaming Hacks: Tips & Tools for Playing the Classics

The following amazing people contributed hacks to this book, often at great personal and professional risk. Give them your love.

• Simon Carless (http://www.mono211.com/ffwd) is Editor of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, the two major resources for professional video game developers. He formerly worked as a PC and console game designer for companies including Eidos Interactive and Atari, an editor for popular technology web site Slashdot, and is the author of Gaming Hacks , O'Reilly's previous game- related Hacks title. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife Holly and a sock-obsessed dachshund named Rollo.

• Cameron Davis (http://www.gazunta.com) started working in the games industry back when the Atari Jaguar was considered a good idea. However, unlike Atari, he is currently not a bastardised parody of his former self. He has written for GameSpot, IGN, Pocket Games , and Official Australian Xbox Magazine among many other publications . He is currently Lead Designer on an unannounced major character action title at Krome Studios, due for release September 2006. Davis' other credits at Krome include Designer/Assistant Producer on the GBA version of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2 and QA roles on a variety of other titles. He lives with his very patient wife Sabrina in Brisbane, Australia.

• Matt DelGiudice has dabbled in video game journalism since 1998, contributing reviews, photos, and FAQs to a variety of web sites and fanzines. Recently, he spent a year in Saitama, Japan as a high school English teacher, spending his free time absorbing the culture and working on independent projects. Now back in the States, he plans to marry his girlfriend of five years . Matt received his BS in Computer Science in 2004 from Clemson University in 2004, where he was a member of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science honors society.

• Robert Ota Dieterich, when not playing old DOS games or trying to make pictures move around on his GBA, splits his time between government contracting, programming video games, and occasionally foraying into Japanese translation. His current game projects include NeonFM Dance Radio (http://www.neonfm.com), due out in arcades in October 2005, and Wings Templar (http://www.hubrisoft.com/wt), due out on PC in late 2005. He can most often be found rushing between Hampton, VA and Towson, MD with the occasional stop in Arlington, VA for a good night's rest.

• Josh Glover (http://www.jmglov.net) has been hacking code for as long as anyone can remember. He currently resides with his wife in scenic Columbus, Ohio, where he enjoys some of the best weather the American Midwest has to offer. He is employed as a Senior Software Engineer by Twenty First Century Communications, Inc., a telecom services and software development house. He is a product of The College of William and Mary in Virginia (where he ran with the now-legendary Group 4 crew), having earned a BS in Computer Science in 2002. He is also the Listmaster of the Tokyo Linux Users Group (TLUG), a position he has held since 2002 and will likely continue to hold until it is pried from his cold, dead hands.

• Adrian Jackson has been playing and writing interactive fiction on and off since the early eighties, for fun and profit. You'd think he'd be better at it by now. By day he works as a software developer doing the impossible with mobile phones; by night he lives in constant fear of being eaten by a grue.

• Brian Jepson is an O'Reilly editor, programmer, and coauthor of Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks and Linux Unwired . He's also a volunteer systems administrator and all-around geek for AS220 (http://www.as220.org), a nonprofit arts center in Providence, Rhode Island. AS220 gives Rhode Island artists uncensored and unjuried forums for their work. These forums include galleries, performance space, and publications. Brian sees to it that technology, especially free software, supports that mission.

• Daniel Kohler (http://www.settingrecords.net) has been involved with electronics and computers from a young age. In 2003, he received his BS in Electrical Engineering with Distinction at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. While working towards his degree, he co-developed a DSPbased effects routing device for use in professional music production. When not working as an engineer, he is busy writing and producing electronic music.

• Nich Maragos (http://www.maragos.org) is a Louisiana-born freelance writer currently living in San Francisco, and has been published in many venues , notably Electronic Gaming Monthly, Gamasutra.com, 1UP.com , and the book you are holding. In his spare time, he plays drums with the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and works at his own snail 's pace on other books he envisions you holding someday.

• Rob "Flack" O'Hara (http://www.robohara.com) writes several columns for Digital Press (http://www.digitpress.com), including Extended Play, MAMExpose, and the Monday Morning MAME Club. His work has also appeared in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, Digital Press' Advanced Collecting Guide, IGN , and Review to a Kill . Rob collects retro videogame consoles, vintage computers, and full- size arcade games, which he shares with his 3-year-old son. Rob graduated from Southern Nazarene University in 2005 with a BS in Organizational Leadership, and has an Associates Degree in Journalism. He is a Senior Network Engineer for Lockheed Martin, working for the Federal Aviation Administration.

• Matt Paprocki has played video games since he was five, but he began writing about them back in 1999 with his own fanzine titled Gaming Source . Once the cost became too much of a burden , he found the web site Digital Press (http://www.digitpress.com) and has been writing reviews for them ever since. His current total is over 500, covering a variety of consoles. He also editorializes on the games industry at his blog http://www.breakingwindows.com. His articles have been published in G-Fan magazine as well as the Toledo City Paper .

• Adam Pavlacka is a game industry veteran and international journalist who has spent the last thirteen years covering the electronic entertainment beat for print, broadcast, and online outlets. A technology geek with a serious case of wanderlust, Adam is always on the lookout for a new toy or a reason to travel. His latest project is Hardcore Gamer Magazine (http://hardcoregamermag.com). Launched at E3 2005, HGM is a true "gamer's magazine" that focuses on the latest technology while avoiding the cookie- cutter coverage commonly found in the enthusiast press.

• Jess Ragan started his own video game newsletter in the pre-Internet boom era of 1992, when print fanzines were the preferred outlet of expression for devoted gamers. During that time, he contributed countless articles to dozens of other fanzines. Like many of his peers, Jess has since migrated to the Web, doing freelance work for the upcoming GameTap service and posting his opinions of the latest industry trends on his web site, The Gameroom Blitz (http://grblitz.overclocked.org).

• Luke Sandel is a serious enthusiast of all things technological and mechanical. He is typically observed in his natural environment wielding a soldering iron, Dremel, or socket wrench. A longtime lurker on several videogame-related forums, he occasionally surfaces to provide technical advice or to offload a heap of modified game systems. He is currently employed in the "web design and programming, computerbased training interface design and programming, video production and non-linear video editing, systems administration, hardware troubleshooting and repair" industry, but he is always seeking new challenges and adventures . He lives in Michigan with his wife Kristy.

• Simon St. Laurent started with a Sinclair ZX-81 in sixth grade, and moved up to a Franklin ACE 1000 that devoured many hours of his youthful time. While he regrets the frightening amount of time he spent debugging spaghetti Applesoft and assembler code because he didn't know how to structure it any better, he still spent far too many enjoyable hours playing games and writing his own. Many years later, he's turned into an editor at O'Reilly Media, Inc.

• Carol Van Epps is a long-time gaming enthusiast. She is a former Full GameMaster for one of the longest running MUDs, DragonRealms, put out by Simutronics Corp (http://www.play.net).