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.

jx233: Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what are your interests / hobbies?
Hellcat: Well, as quite some already gathered I’m from the land with the horrible TV program…. Germany.
Which already has us at my interests, I enjoy quite a lot of TV shows like Stargate, NCIS, House MD, Doctor Who…. well the list could go on to infinity and beyond but as one can see I’m a big SciFi fan I usually try to get my hand on those shows in their original language (=english) as I can’t stand the german syncs and can enjoy them way better this way.
Apart from that I enjoy hanging out with my friends, going to the cinema and – quite obviously – computers and video games

jx233: Who are you in the real world? Student, worker, retired? (retired is stupid question but that for laughs)
Hellcat: I’m a simple worker with a simple job, nothing special.
There really isn’t much to tell about that, it happens quite often that I have to work some more hours till getting home, which leaves less free time which again means less time for making stuff (for the PSP for example).
But the money for all the hobbies has to come from somewhere Maybe one day I’ll get my foot into professional game development…. would be great

jx233: Explain to us about your username, why did you use that one?
Hellcat: That started ages ago…. back on the Amiga computer we had a little “two man group” (a buddy and me). We didn’t do much stuff, just a few intros and such. But also for that we needed some cool nicknames. After 315 ideas of names that were already taken I suddenly had the idea for “Hellcat” and as we couldn’t really find someone already active with that name I took it…. and kept it

jx233: Changing the topic a little.
How and why did you join the PSP Scene?
Hellcat: It all started with the PS1 Great console, great games, lot of fun. So I got stuck on the PlayStation brand (also got a PS2) and when a portable version of the PlayStation was announced, I just *had* to get that, so I preordered my PSP and got it on german release day.
Since I always had an interest in what else one could do with various devices beyond what their creators thought of for it (“unleashing the full potential” as it’s sometimes phrased), I had already read a lot about the PSP and the homebrewed things people made run on FW 1.00 and 1.50 – even more a shocker when german PSPs came with 1.52.
But some lucky day the very first downgrader came and after looking at other people’s awesome programs and achievements with wide open mouth I finally ended up on ps2dev.org and eventually installing their PSPSDK for the first time.
I was so impressed of what some people did (all these hacks and other tricky things are so interesting) that I wanted to find out how all of it works (always want to know how stuff works ), so I kept reading, asking questions, more reading, more asking questions…. fortunately there are many devs around who do answer those questions.

jx233: If you could contribute something that would be a major breakthrough to the Scene, what would it be?
Hellcat: There’s only one breakthrough that everyone’s thinking about, isn’t it? Finally bringing full CFW to the newer PSPs
I’d really like to find a good hack or exploit myself, my very own CFW is also on my wishlist.
Or simply convincing Sony to open up the platform a bit more….

jx233: What motivated you choose the PSP for devlopment?
Hellcat: That’s an easy one Because it’s a (very) great platform, I have one and the HB PSPSDK is quite easy to work with.
Also, the people I meet in the PSP community are quite great. Of course not all of them, but most of them

jx233: How long were you devloping for the PSP?
Hellcat: I think the first time I touched the SDK is now something like three years ago….

jx233: What is your favorite thing from the PSP world of homebrew?
Hellcat: I used PSP-PDA for quite some time and FileAssistant++ and PSPFiler made it quite high in my faves list along zx81’s PSP-FTPd (FTP-server).
But all time favorite is Arts X-Flash from the 1.50 days! That thing was just pure awesomeness!

jx233: What are your views / opinions on the TA-088 V3 and PSP-3000?
Hellcat: Funbreaker. On the bottom line the 3k is just like Sonys FW updates: some security fixes, no real benefit for the customer beside some alibi features no one needs or wants.
Of course they needed to counter Pandora, but they shouldn’t have hidden the backdor THAT good

jx233: Are you developing in other major homebrew consoles? Saying like Wii or iPhone for example.
Hellcat: I already took a look at the iPhone and I’m also going to check out the NDS – as time permits something nice will come out…. maybe…. one day….

jx233: Speaking of other consoles, which is your favorite?
Hellcat: Oh, that’s a tough one, now. Hardware wise it’s PSP and PS3, those two are way ahead of their time IMO, Sony did a great job on them. Unfortunately there’s no good games for them, or at least not that much. So the trophy for the most enjoyable games has to go to the NDS for the time beeing…. as sad as that is

jx233: And what is your favorite game for it?
Hellcat: Oh, there isn’t really “one above all” game for me, depending on my days mood I prefer a game from the one or the other genere.
At the moment I really enjoy “GTA:Chinatown-Wars”, “Prof. Layton and the mysterious Village” and “Nanostray”.

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