======================================================= _____ _ _ / _ / ___ _ __ | |__ __ _ _ __( )__ \// / / _ \| '_ \| '_ \ / _` | '__|/ __| / //\ (_) | |_) | | | | (_| | | \__ \ /____/\___/| .__/|_| |_|\__,_|_| |___/ |_| ___ _ / \___ _ __ ___ __ _(_)_ __ / /\ / _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _` | | '_ \ / /_// (_) | | | | | | (_| | | | | | /___,' \___/|_| |_| |_|\__,_|_|_| |_| ======================================= N E W S L E T T E R ======================================= Volume I Issue #1 November 9th, 1999. ======================================= Contents: 1. Intro 2. Featured Site of the Week 3. Featured File of the Week 4. Interview - THIS WEEK: TNSe^1999 5. Puzzle/Quiz 6. Quote of the Week 7. Horoscopes 8. Outro -= Intro =- You wanted it, and you got it! Your first issue of the Zophar's Domain newsletter. It's been some time since we held that poll a few months ago, and now its finally delivered right to your web browser. If you want this in your box every week, which is about how often it will be released, then head on over to the sign up page and it will be done. This issue will have different features every week, but for now, we'll focus on generalities. As many of you know, it's Zophar's Domain's 3rd birthday, and I'm sure you see many of the festivities that the staff has put together. Brad, and the rest of the ZD staff, have been busily at work the last month or so working on stuff to make this a special 3 year anniversary. We at ZD, would like to thank you for your continued support of Zophar's Domain and we're glad that you've decided to come to Zophar's Domain for your emulation needs. We appreciate it! Let's get on to the good stuff. -= Featured Site of the Week =- Due to the fact that it IS Zophar's Domains birthday, we thought it would be appropriate to have Zophar's Domain as our featured site of the week. Zophar's Domain was started 3 years ago by Brad (Zophar.) and company. It started out as a hobby, but soon it grew into a huge site that offers its visitors updates on emulator releases. It also has news on upcoming releases, general news, a poll every so often to find out what visitors want to see on ZD (Which is one of the reasons you're reading this right now.), and provided some articles on occasion. It also provides emulators for computers, arcades, and consoles and even calculators. It provides other emulators, too. Zophar's Domain has been though a lot since it began, but its still going strong even after 3 years. Matthew (Nitro.) took it upon himself to code Zophar's Domain an official SPC player that now has the ZSNES SPC sound core implemented into it. Zophar's Domain offers you a ZSNES mirror site in the event that the official ZSNES site goes down, and also offers many hosted sites. So, visit Zophar's Domain for the ultimate emulation experience. -= Featured File of the Week =- ZD-SPC. What is it? It's an SPC player that allows you to play SPCs, ZSTs, and ZMVs from the sound cores of SNES emulators. It features both the SNES9x and ZSNES sound cores, a play list, RAR support, timer support, internal ID666 tags, mini web browser, skin support for you visual people, keyboard visualization, an Internet browser plug-in, and more! It was coded by, Matthew (Zophar's Domain staffer, Nitro.). So, why not check it out? Go download it at: http://zdspc.zophar.net and give your ears some nice soothing SNES music. -= Interview =- ============ THIS WEEK: TNSe^1999 ============ I had the privilege of interviewing Thomas Steen known to many of us as TNSe^1999. TNSe^1999 is in the process of coding an NES emulator and hes also ripped tons of NSF's. He's from Norway, and here's what he had to say: ZD: Hey, how are you doing? TNSe^1999: Hey, not bad. ZD: That's good. ZD I have a few questions to ask you. My first one is... ZD: When did you get into emulation? TNSe^1999: Since Spring '98 I guess. ZD: What got you into it? TNSe^1999: I was looking through a CD I got from a friend, when I ran into Nesticle and a bunch of ROMs. So, what I was basically doing was looking for a newer version of Nesticle and more ROMs. I found a lot more than what I initially found. SNES emulators, Sega emulators, etc. ZD: So, what is your favourite game on the NES? TNSe^1999: I've always likd the Megaman series, the SMB series, Solar Jetman, and Punch Out, of course. ZD: I love SMB. Super Mario 2 was different than the rest of the series which spiced up the collection. TNSe^1999: Japanese or US? ZD: US. TNSe^1999: Yes, I was like, WTF? That game had awesome graphics for that time, and pretty good music, too. Also the different characteristics of the players added a lot to the game. (Which is also why some people hate it.) ZD: So, how old are you? TNSe^1999: Hmm. Lets see. I was born on February 19th. 1978, so that would make me about 21, I guess. ZD: I'm 21, too. TNSe^1999: Damn! I'm too damn old for this. ZD: hehehe. ZD: According to Zophar, you're coding or have coded the first Windows 9x NES emulator to have netplay since Nesticle. True or false? TNSe^1999: Are you talking about Netplay that actually works and is usable? or Netplay that is there? In the latter, yes. TNSe^1999: But its totally unusable. ZD: So, that means you're still working on it? TNSe^1999: The day an emuwriter calls something finished.... TNSe^1999: He's tired of the project. TNSe^1999: It's in my goals, yes. ZD: Whats the emulators name? TNSe^1999: NESten 0.3. Currently, NESten 0.5 is "in the works." TNSe^1999: NESten 0.3 was too slow/bug ridden. I guess no one wants to play SMB at 50 FPS on a 500mhz CPU. ZD: What other projects have you done to contribute to the emulation scene? TNSe^1999: I'm also making an NSFTool. It's a program that will assist in creating NSF's. It's still in development, but I guess it will soon be finished. TNSe^1999: Eek, I used that word. Finished. ZD: Hahaha. TNSe^1999: It will soon be ready for release, rather. hehe. ZD: Correction, huh? TNSe^1999: Hehehe. ZD: When did you discover Zophar's Domain? TNSe^1999: When I discovered ZD? TNSe^1999: I have no idea when I first surfed in there, but I loved the Monkey commerical, and the ZD logo was kinda "l33t." ZD: That thing is irritating! (Referring to the Monkey commercial.) Lycia So, with all this Believe stuff thats going around, what do you think of it? Do you think that its all hype for no reason or do you think its actually good? TNSe^1999: Haha. This Believe stuff has been getting onto a lot of peoples nerves lately. But it has SURELY been noticed. My opinion? TNSe^1999: I've tried to ignore it, but its freaking hard to ignore. The pieces of the puzzle that has been handed out "zo phar" (So far.) are like, bloodlust.zophar.net and the believe link points to some bloodlust graphic. Just a hunch. ZD: So, you don't actually know whats going to happen? TNSe^1999: I actually don't. ZD: I'm surprised of that, but then again, not many people know, except major IRC freaks who hang in #ZopharsDomain. TNSe^1999: I guess I'm not a major IRC dude, but as said, I've tried to ignore it. :) ZD: So, with Daves Classic Gaming going down, and Emu News that closed down in March, would you consider ZD to be the #1 site in emulation? If so, why? If not, why not? TNSe^1999: Hehe, it's a close match. But, I guess ZD gets a lead. The other site I like very much is Kinox. (http://www.kinox.org). Kinox is more fun, while ZD is more serious. ZD: Yes, Brad takes his site remarkably serious, but that makes it good. TNSe^1999: I'm not big on emulation site visiting, but the two sites I always visit when I come online, are the two mentioned above. ZD: Sweet. ZD: Okay, one last thing and I'll leave ya alone. hehehe. TNSe^1999: : Okay. ZD: Where do you think emulation is going? Is it slowly dying or is it just heating up or is it riding its peak? TNSe^1999: Emulation is still going strong and has been for a while. But we will for sure see more "corporate" of if you want, commercial emulators. We've already seen WinNT on Alpha CPU's ZD: And Bleem! is already out there. TNSe^1999: Yes, but I count Bleem! as more like a personal project. Like iNES. TNSe^1999: I think that Nintendo, Sega, and Sony are aware of the possibility and perhaps you can play N64 games on Dolphin. TNSe^1999: I believe the PSX2 should be backwards compatible with the PSX, but I'm not 100% sure. I think it uses Hardware emulation (a PSX inside the PSX2) TNSe^1999: Which is CHEATING! TNSe^1999: Hopefully, we will soon see N64 emulate the good old NES at full speed. ZD: That would be VERY nice. ZD: Well, I guess this is mandatory at the end of interviews Do you have any last comments? TNSe^1999: I would like to thank the people who have given a lot of their time to writing documentation for the consoles. Some documents I have had a lot of use for, is the Nestech.txt, 6502.txt and mappers.nfo. Without these people collecting the information, I doubt my emulator would be working at all ZD: Yoshi/koitsu did quite a bit for the NES scene. TNSe^1999: Yes, he and quite a few other people. ZD: Thank you for doing this interview. I appreciate it. TNSe^1999: No problem. Interview done by: Lycia (Stacey Flewelling.) -= Puzzle/Quiz =- We're not sure what these puzzles will be about every week, but we'll try and make them as challenging as possible. All that participate and get the answers right will get a mention on the ZD page. The answers to these questions will be in issue #2. Also, as a special bonus, if you are the first one to get them all right, you will recieve a $20 dollar check. E-MAIL your answers to: zdletter@hotmail.com. Have fun! Here are the puzzles: Puzzle 1 As a test of intelligence, Mensa sits two candidates in closed room. The invigilator has three stickers, two white and one black. Upon each of their foreheads he places a sticker at random, so that neither candidate can see their own sticker. The candidate who identifies their own sticker first will be allowed entry into Mensa. After a few minutes, one of the candidatesfigured he had a white sticker. How? Puzzle 2 Which fruit comes next in this sequence: banana pear kiwi tomato Choose from: peach lemon plum guava Puzzle 3 Can you find a seven digit number which describes itself. The first digit is the number of zeroes in the number. The second digit is the number of ones in the number, etc. For example, in the number 21200, there are 2 zeroes, 1 one, 2 twos, 0 threes and 0 fours. Puzzle 4 What number completes this sequence? 4 15 14 11 5 ==?== Puzzle 5 You have 12 coins, one of which is counterfeit. The counterfeit is indistinguishable from the rest except that it is either heavier or lighter (but you don't know which). How can you determine which coin is the counterfeit in 3 weighings on a balance scale? Puzzle 6 While on the island of Dellzup, you have been captured by the Evil Prince. He has decided to play a game with you. He offers you the choice of two doors, behind one of which lies a hungry lion and behind the other lies treasures beyond your wildest dreams. Guarding one of the doors is a native who always lies and guarding the other door is a native who always tells the truth. Unfortunately, you cannot tell which is which. You may ask one of the natives for help in choosing the door. They both know which door they are guarding, so what single question could you ask? -= Quote of the Week =- In spirit of whats happening on ZD today, we thought it might be humorous to include this quote: Will someone finally tell everyone the fact that I am Phantom? Of course, due to the overwhelming response we got in #ZopharsDomain, we don't think many of you saw this. -= Horoscopes =- Read your horoscope and find out what's in the forecast for you! ARIES - March 21 - April 19 See Scorpio. It's pretty much the opposite. TAURUS - April 20 - May 20 All your friends think you're stubborn. Stubborn as an ox. Why not challenge them to a few rounds of beer? Then we'll see how stubborn they can be when they can't handle their alcohol. GEMINI - May 21 - June 21 You can depend on the fact that someone close to you is going to die this week. That's because I'm going to kill them. CANCER - June 22 - July 22 It's been a hard few weeks. Why not take a few days off and dust off that VCR and watch some movies? Yeah, some cheap old movies. Be sure to bring your special someone. LEO - July 23 - Aug. 22 If you have a job, quit. You'll have a lot more free time that way. Who cares about money? VIRGO - Aug. 23 - Sept. 22 Ooh, yes. You think you're just SO perfect. In fact, most of your friends are tempted to expose your cheap porn collection. Not so perfect now, are we? LIBRA - Sept. 23 - Oct. 23 You're going to face some homo-erotic tendencies within the next week. Instead of pushing them away, why don't you go have sex with your gay friend and see what the hell he's so horny about. SCORPIO - Oct. 24 - Nov. 21 You will have hot sex five of the seven days this week. Hopefully, it won't be with your hand. SAGITTARIUS - Nov. 22 - Dec. 21 Being a fire sign, you should do something that involves fire. Like setting your ex-girlfriends/boyfriends hair on fire for insulting you. CAPRICORN - Dec. 22 - Jan. 19 You are destining to go to your mediocre place of employment 5 of the 7 days of this week. Of those days, you will come home to your microwave meals, and your dirty dishes. AQUARIUS - Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 Being an air sign, your mind is constantly on a flight and you can't seem to put your feet on the ground. My suggestion is to stop taking E and go into rehab. Hey! It might help. PISCES - Feb. 19 - Mar. 20 Water sign, huh? Well, that means that you think clearly and you don't let stuff fog your brain. Maybe its time to head over to your local bar/pub/tavern and polish off a few beer and add some fog to that brain and relax. -= Outro =- Well, there you have it. Your first newsletter. We hope you enjoyed this first issue of the Zophar's Domain newsletter. More issues are to come, so sit tight. We'll start distributing them as soon as we can. In the meantime, keep coming to ZD! We are glad you've chosen us. ======================================================= Credits: Created by: Lycia (Stacey Flewelling) Thanks go out to TNSe^1999 for doing the interview. Horoscope help by: Stick Figure (Ernie Smith) ======================================================= © 1996-1999 Zophar's Domain All Rights Reserved