While at PAX East yesterday I had the opportunity to interview Erik Wolpaw, a writer for Portal 2. Sadly I had left my recorder at home so I was unable to record the conversation. One of my first questions pertained to the game’s length, something which was hinted at during the PAX demo. While the original Portal was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, the game itself was relatively short. For the sequel Wolpaw gave me a rough estimate of about 5 times longer, including the new co-operative mode.

You can catch more information, including the difficulty of the game and how PC users will be rewarded with the game following their PS3 purchase.

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Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime isn’t breaking a sweat over the immient release of Modern Warfare 2 on competing platforms. In fact, he feels Nintendo has an answer, which is none other than New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Speaking in a GTTV interview, Reggie noted his belief that the retro styled gameplay will make it a bit hit among the Wii crowd this holiday season. While admitting it will be close, he feels confident that our favorite Italian plumber will edge past MW2 sales, at least on a singe platform.

We’re sure Activision is quaking in its boots. Watch for yourself in the clip above.

Community and staff member jx233 recently caught up with Hellcat for an interview, gathering his thoughts on the PSP homebrew scene in general and what sparked his interest in hobbyist development. A well-known figure amongst the homebrew crowd, Hellcat has been responsible for several custom firmware aiding utilities, perhaps most notably Pandora installer. Thanks to its ease of use, this particular application gained widespread popularity amongst users of all experience levels in the scene.

All credit goes to jx for conducting the interview and of course thanks to Hellcat for sharing his valuable time.

See the full interview after the break. Check out previous eXophase.com interviews with well-known sceners like Chilly Willy and Mathieulh by hitting up our interview section. more »

Resident forum goer mortalinstincts recently caught up for a chit-chat with Alek, the website administrator of Dark-AleX.org. Throughout the years, Alek has aided in coordinating several M33 releases under the guidence of Dark_AleX himself. His influence also helped formed Dark-Alex.org into the lively and respected multi-cultural community that it is today.

To learn more about his involvement in the PSP homebrew scene and his thoughts on recent developments, such as the release of ChickHEN, a homebrew enabler for firmware 5.03, hit the jump.

All credit goes out to mortalinstincts for conducting the interview! Check out previous eXophase.com interviews with well-known sceners like Chilly Willy and Mathieulh by hitting up our interview section.

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Resident forum staffer Acerthief recently caught up with homebrew developer jas0nuk for an insightful interview on his involvement in the PSP homebrew community.

Before jumping straight into the interview, we’d like to give you a brief backstory. Age 17 and currently residing in the United Kingdom, jas0nuk’s roots strech back to what is now commonly called the golden-era of the PSP scene, a time when software-based firmware downgraders were all the rage, and when a number of homebrew developers were pumping out major releases for the PSP on an almost weekly basis.

His homebrew efforts include a number of widely used applications, including PRXdecrypter, PSPident, and the Pandora ELF/PBP Menu. Read on for the full interview!

jas0nuk Interview

Under his alias of Chilly Willy, developer Joe Fenton is known in the homebrew arena as the brain behind some of the most widely used PSP applications. KeyCleaner and IDStorage Manager, just to name a couple. During his years in the PSP scene, he has also dabbled in the porting of open-source PC game titles, perhaps most notably releasing a port of iD Software’s DOOM complete with TV-out functionality.

eXophase.com forum staffer and moderator Acerthief recently had the chance to talk to the man himself about his views on the homebrew scene as a whole, as well as his gaming interests and extensive background in software development. Check out the two-part interview by hitting up the links below.

Interview with Chilly Willy part 1 of 2
Interview with Chilly Willy part 2 of 2

As promised, here is the second chapter to our interview with the PSP homebrew crew of Team Wildc*rd.

For this feature we interviewed three of the main contributors to the Wildc*rd project — AtrumDonum, BallsOfSteel, and Bride.

On with the interview then! more »

When PSP homebrew legend Dark_AleX decided to take leave of the scene, uncertainty existed for the future of custom firmware. Just who would follow in his footsteps?

Weeks following Alex’s leave, a Russian team of developers known as “M33″ blasted onto the scene, with their first release being a 3.51 custom firmware. Of course, this was a surprise to many, but little did we know that another team with a similar goal would soon be emerging alongside M33.

This team became known as Team Wildc*rd. Their first release, although released to the public eariler than the team wished, was a custom firmware known as 3.40 WildC*rd.

We recently had a chat with Team WildC*rd, to find out more about what’s in store for the next WildC*rd release, as well as their personal views on the homebrew scene.

Read on for the first exclusive interview with Team WildC*rd. more »

Another week, another interview. And this time, I’ve had the honour of interviewing one of the most prolific developers of the homebrew scene, zx-81. It’s impossible to not notice his contributions in the homebrew scene.

His major work has been in the emulation scene where he has released emulators for almost all retro platforms. It’s great to enjoy those old games which we used to play with our siblings or our friends, brings back a lot of great memories. He has also successfully created/ported several immensely useful networking-related applications like a VNC client, an SSH client, an FTP server/client and the newly released IRC client. His blog has information on all of his work.

Anyways, I had the pleasure of doing an email interview with him a couple of days ago, and without further ado, here is the interview in its entirety!
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Mathieulh is one of the pillars of the big foundations that is our PSP scene. His journey in the PSP scene spotlight started with his now-defunct team, SonyXTeam. He then went on to work with other scene greats like Dark AleX and the N00bz team, giving us great things in the form of downgraders, custom firmwares and many other things that you and I might not know about.

I caught up with him a couple of days ago and he agreed to this interview. Note that the interview was taken before the recent custom firmware release by Team M33. On with the interview then! more »