An Ode to ScummVM – A Celebration of Twenty Years

On October 9th, 2021, the ScummVM (https://www.scummvm.org) team celebrated the 20th Anniversary of their brilliant game engine emulator with a new 2.5.0 release. This release brings along many new features including:

  • Full implementation of the 2.5D game engine emulator, ResidualVM, for emulation of such titles as Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey and Myst 3: Exile.
  • Addition of ten new game engines/sub-engines. Adding compatibility to such titles as Little Big Adventure, Crusader: No Remorce and The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time.
  • Updated Roland MT-32 emulation code to the Munt project’s newer mt32emu 2.5.1.
  • Adding game engine support for various alternate languages for multiple titles, as usual per new revisions.
  • Improved emulation of the iMUSE engine for titles like Full Throttle and The Curse of Monkey Island.
  • And many, many more.

Over the last ten years, the ScummVM project pushed compatibility into totally new realms, building engines to support classic Sierra AGI and SCI, Revolution, Westwood Studios, Origin Systems, Activision and Delphine Software titles and many more. They now support over two-hundred and fifty games!

Not only does the ScummVM project bring support to more modern Windows and Mac operating systems, it also supports (both officially and unofficially) nearly fifty platforms.

Personally, I was introduced to ScummVM in 2004 when I was gifted a used desktop from my future father-in-law, featuring a Pentium 3 processor and Windows 2000 Professional operating system. This PC replaced my Pentium 233 MMX daily driver running Windows 95 in my childhood bedroom. The P3 and Windows 2000 broke the compatibility with my favorite Lucasarts games, such as Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, Sam n’ Max: Hit the Road and Full Throttle. I spent hours messing with VDMsound, a Windows 2000/XP DOS audio compatibility tool, but my results were quite unsuccessful.

In comes ScummVM to the rescue! And now I’ve been faithfully installing it on all my PCs and numerous systems over the last 17 years including:

  • Four laptops
  • Five desktops
  • At least ten cell phones.
  • Sony Playstation Portable
  • Nintendo Wii
  • Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi 400

Regularly, I pull out my cell phone when people talk about their favorite cell phone games and fire up the opening sequence to Sam n’ Max: Hit the Road. They all think I’m nuts, but I get to carry some of my most cherished childhood favorites in my pocket.

Congratulations to the ScummVM team on twenty years of classic gaming excellence!

You can research and download ScummVM for yourself at https://www.scummvm.org. And also download ScummVM on Google Play and the Apple store. Please consider giving to the ever continuing efforts of the ScummVM team through their PayPal link on the website.

Author: Adam Dorough
Host of The Commodore Chronicles Podcast. Lover of good adventures, great story-lines, two children, one wife and Jesus Christ.

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