Gaming Hacks

Play Classic PC Graphic Adventures

ScummVM is a cross-platform set of multiplatform game interpreters. The authors describe it as “a `virtual machine’ for several classic graphical point-and-click adventure games.” It’s named after the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) engine used in classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and Full Throttle, but it’s diversified somewhat; it now handles Revolution games such as the Broken Sword series.

Running ScummVM

ScummVM is particularly clever because it interprets the original Scumm source files, whatever the platform. In other words, it doesn’t try to emulate the original hardware platform, but like the Inform text adventures ( [Hack #85] ), it takes the information in the source files and interprets it independently of the platform. Obviously, each individual hardware platform’s version of ScummVM then has the information necessary to turn that information into pictures and sounds.

Let’s consider the Windows version of ScummVM. Download it from http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php, install it, and then run ScummVM.exe. You’ll see a straightforward windowed menu system to which you can add games by navigating to the directory the datafiles are in (even if they’re on a CD). It’s really as simple as that, although there are a host of command-line and in-game options.

To play a game, you need the original media. Sources for this vary: perhaps you have floppy disks stashed away ...