ScummVM
Posted on April 9, 2009 in Games
ScummVM is an application that allows you to run classic graphical point-and-click adventure games and it is most likely the greatest achievement of open source reverse engineering I’ve come across. ScummVM started out as a project to run Lucas Art’s SCUMM ( SCUMM stands for “Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion”) based engine games, like Monkey Island and then moved on to implement various other adventure game engines. Those engines include Adventuresoft (Simon The Sorcerer series), Coktel Vision (Gobliiins), Sierra AGI (King’s Quest etc) and various other. Each of these engines have been reverse engineered to be able to play the games using the original data files. The ScummVM has done all this with little or no help from the original developers (except for Virtual Theatre engine from Revolution Software and a few other) making the task a hard and strenuous process.
The technical achievement that ScummVM is not just that the team have reverse engineered all these adventure game engines but also the fact that the application is written with cross platform use in mind. The applications is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, PocketPC, PalmOS, AmigaOS, BeOS, OS/2, PSP, PS2, SymbianOS/EPOC, iPhone, Nintendo DS and many more. So basically you can play these old great games on just about any computing device out there.
ScummVM is a must have for anyone that is a big fan of those old-school point-and-click adventure games from the late 80s and through the 90s. The genre pretty much died away after the 90s but ScummVM offers you a chance to revisit those old game using the original data files so you can pick up your old copies if you still have them and use them right away. Adventure games have been making a small comeback in the last two years but the new games don’t hold a candle to the great adventure games of old. I recommend grabbing a copy of ScummVM below and trying out some of the best adventure games of all times.
A list of compatible games in the stable builds.
- Download MacOS X Snapshot 20090408 (All engines enabled)
- Download MacOS X version 0.13.0
- Download Windows version 0.13.0
- Download builds for other OSes
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