Arkadyzja is a launcher for the Duckstation and Flycast Dojo, emulators for the PlayStation and Dreamcast game console systems respectively. We recently sat down for an interview with Ren, its creator.

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself as a creator and as a person?

I’m a software engineer (in web development) & retired Tekken player from Poland (I used to play Tekken 5 and Tekken tag tournament 2 at local tournaments and of course Tekken 3 Online in 2006-2010 during Honmaru hey days :). Arkadyzja is my first ever homebrew/community project. I’m 35. I like old hardware and arcade games. I’ve learned programming many years ago, from free tutorials made by passionate people who decided to contribute to this world. Arkadyzja is my small free contribution. 

You’re the creator of “Arkadyzja” which is a program that acts as a launcher for the PlayStation emulator Duckstation and the Dreamcast/Arcade emulator Flycast Dojo. Can you tell us more about this program and what got you involved in making your program to host games using both of these emulators?

I always wanted to build some homebrew app to learn and try new stuff related to my work but not for the sake of just building, I wanted something that I consider useful. What got me involved? A bit of everything: nostalgia, lack of updates for quite a long time for Fightcade, Tekken 8 being not what I was hoping for and overall state of gaming industry. My PS5 is collecting dust.

The Netplay part in Duckstation works really well. This is thanks to Stenzek himself (creator of Duckstation) who’s rewritten it from scratch. However, like with every emulator, there are a lot of manual steps: you need the same bios, same settings, same save-states etc. Some games need specific individual settings for Netplay as well (to avoid desync). You also need to find someone to play – traveling from Discord to Discord looking for players. These are the issues I wanted to solve with Arkadyzja. I wanted to make it as simple as possible to gather together as many retro players as I can.

What is your current opinion of other programs such as Fightcade which serve a similar role/function to the one that you’ve created and began working on?

I think Fightcade is awesome. It keeps the lights on for many classic fighting games, giving them a second life with a more modern environment. It’s also technically really good. I’m learning a lot of stuff from it lately, even though it’s closed source. At the same time I’m trying to go a slightly different route. While Fightcade is focusing on fighting games with its ranked system and game specific lobbies — I would like to focus more on the “casual” audience that would like to play some of their favorite classics with friends or strangers — not necessarily fighting games.

That’s why there’s only one lobby in Arkadyzja with all the games people are currently playing/waiting for opponents – taking advantage of Duckstation’s ability to jump into running games anytime. I would like to keep it that way as long as I can (it might become too crowded in the future, but we will see). That being said, 90% of the current Arkadyzja players are playing fighting games.

Flycast-Dojo (more Netplay-focused fork of the Flycast emulator) was added with intention to bring 4-player support in the near future. There is already a beta version of emulator that has that functionality. We just need to wait for Blueminder (creator of Flycast-Dojo) to merge it together and I will start the integration, as soon as possible. I just love Dreamcast, which some DC fans can already tell by my nickname.

Blueminder is a very active and passionate dev – I’m learning a lot from him. To bring Flycast to Arkadyzja we worked together for 2 weeks.

Your program is currently in Alpha (version 0.0.17). What makes a program go from Alpha phase to its Beta phase and furthermore into a full release?

Program goes from alpha to beta to full release, when the developer feels like its good enough and usually it’s never good enough from a developer’s perspective. Given the current state of Arkadyzja, its alpha is there just to give me an excuse to go fast, try things and break things. 

You need to keep in mind that the app is just a couple months old. Many shortcuts were taken to bring this to people this fast and it was still a lot of work. The current app is just a playground and learning experience for me. That being said, a couple of tournaments were played using it and it was a solid enough experience.

For me the dream 1.0 version would have: 4player support for Duckstation & Flycast with replays and maybe some high scores, actual account registration with player stats/friendlist, a proper installer (however I like the current portable approach with auto-updater), some features for tournament organizers and a lot more polished code.  I’m also thinking about adding other emulators, but that’s hard to configure and because of that, it’s hard to find people to play with.

5. What games would you recommend for people to try on your platform? Do you have a favorite game(s)? Do you have a game that you can’t stand or won’t play?

I don’t think I need to recommend anything, if you searched for Duckstation & Arkadyzja you already know what you are looking to play. Especially since you need to bring those games with you.

Currently Arkadyzja supports 263 games for Duckstation. By support, I mean we provide save-states (with everything unlocked) and per game settings to prevent desync. However we do not provide ROMs or support piracy. I say “we” because 99% of games/settings/save-states related stuff is done by Action. A lot of the games he’s added, I’ve never even heard of. I’m thankful that he’s doing it because I can focus on all the coding. None of the save-states were prepared by me actually.

For the Flycast – we are on par with games that are supported by Fightcade, which is more than 300 titles. Personally – I built Arkadyzja with Tekken 3 in mind but it turns out I’m a bit tired of it. Virtua Tennis & other fast arcade games from the last Sega console is what I enjoy playing most nowadays. 4 player Netplay in Virtua Tennis is gonna be awesome.

What can people do currently to support the development of this project and its growth?

Most importantly – try it and spread the word about it. Arkadyzja is fairly popular in Latin America but not that popular in the US or Europe (yet). Please also leave some feedback on Discord to make it better.

For those who want to help financially there is also Ko-fi. I’m running multiple servers to keep this project going. Cost went up significantly since the last update where I introduced relay servers. They are needed for those behind restricted NATs, can’t open ports or on mobile networks. If you ever wondered why you can connect & play via Fightcade but can’t directly via emulator – they also implemented something similar and I’m proud I was able to figure it out and host myself for Duckstation. I’m not planning to add any premium features to Arkadyzja, because I don’t own the emulators or games. I would rather close down the service and just put it on my resume if I wont be able to afford it.

Where can people find you on social media or online if they want to reach out?

Honmaru Discord & https://twitter.com/rencoding

I’m also thinking about the YouTube tech channel to explain some features and document some technical difficulties and how they were resolved. Might be fun to watch for myself 10-20 years from now.

8. Is there anything you’d like for me to share with everyone reading this?

Support the OG emulators creators – there are very few people in this world that are skilled enough and also willing to do this work. Without those guys – many of your favorite games will be gone forever, especially after the closure of online stores/ game studios, licensing issues and hardware wearing out. I’m just a wingman trying to showcase their hard work and help others to enjoy it.

A HUGE thank you to REN for taking the time to answer these questions. Please take the time to try out Arkadyzja and maybe drop by his Discord and say hi, okay?