ScummVM
Tuesday, 10 October 2006. Gaming.
Yesterday, the Blogosphere was awash with stories about vNES, a website that lets you play NES games online. Retro Gaming is ridiculously popular, as an example I recently found a copy of Dare Devil Dennis and a BBC Micro emulator for Darren's girlfriend- she was delighted, Darren quickly tired of the irritating music.
However, playing old games is very popular, the fact that the Zork games are still being downloaded is a testament to how much old computer mean to the players that grew up with them. For those of you like me, for whom text based games, were a bit before our time, the graphical point-and-click adventure games are fondly remembered.
ScummVM is a cross-platform emulator based on the "Scumm" scripting language created by LucasArts. You can download the program for free at the ScummVM site and suddenly I am able to play some of the greatest games of all time, (in my opinion), from the comfort of my Mac- there is a Windows version too. You can play amongst others, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Simon the Sorcerer, and the Monkey Island series.
If you are into playing the old point and click adventure games, ScummVM is a must. As a personal note, they are working on making Discworld 1 playable on ScummVM. If they succeed I may have to put the blog on hold whilst I waste the best part of six months reliving my joy of playing the game again.
It is a bit odd that these games are so popular, if you go into any video game store, the shelves have loads of old games for sale for about £5, (that's about $9 for you Americans). In an interview with Andrew Brazier, Assistant designer on Simon 3D, he stated that:
Unfortunately, 2D is pretty much dead now. The only way we could make a 2D adventure nowadays is to fund it ourselves, which is unlikely, especially as adventures are probably the most demanding (resources-wise) games you can make. #
I don't know if this is true, do people really prefer processor hungry, hack-and-slash, "you need a damn fast pc to run this", type of games to the beautifully well crafted work of the early graphical adventure games? Or do we buy Halo 2, because that's all we are presented with? Answers on a postcard please.
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