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ScummVM 20th Anniversary – The Survival of Point and Click Adventure Games

Point and click adventure games are brimming with charm, story, character, atmosphere and often a smattering of chuckles. They have entertained us for literally decades and no project has supported the survival of this genre greater than the team over at ScummVM.

ScummVM is quite simply a program that allows you to run many of these classics, in fact hundreds of them on modern platforms, so you can relive these wonderful moments all over again without the pain of hardware compatibility. ScummVM is also enabling a whole new generation of young gamers to experience this part of our gaming heritage.

ScummVM are now celebrating 20 years of development of their open source software, counting from the very first code submission made all the way back in the year 2001.

First commit to ScummVM – 9th October 2001

It’s a momentous achievement and when so many open source projects lay dormant never to reach their full potential, the ScummVM team continue to pour their own love of the point and click adventure game genre by adding and refining support of these superb titles – prodiving us the community so much happiness in return. Their achievement that has contributed so much to game preservation should not be understated.

So congratulations to ScummVM and to everyone who has been involved with or supported this amazing success story!

ScummVM Timeline Highlights

Today was a milestone for the ScummVM project, as we finally received the long-awaited for e-mail from LucasArts Legal regarding the project. Thankfully, they do not yet appear to have a valid complaint. Their message requesting the removal of the site is based on the presumption that we are distributing LucasArts own engine on this site. Of course, ScummVM is a fully original work based equally on reverse engineering and original decoding work by many different people in the community, so this request doesn’t really affect us. We’re safe for the moment, and will continue to work on bringing the wonderful classics of the LucasArts company to your computing devices for, hopefully, a long time to come!

Oh, the legalities!

Back in February 2012, I had the pleasure of interviewing developers Eugene Sandulenko, Arnaud Boutonné and Johannes Schickel from ScummVM. I am re-releasing this podcast here as ScummVM are now celebrating their 20th anniversary, which is an amazing achievement and I wanted us to relive some of the stories of the development of this fantastic software.

ScummVM Music Enhancement Project

In January 2006, I began the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project – a fanmade selection of recreated soundtracks based on the original MIDI files. Compatible with ScummVM, you can enjoy titles including Simon the Sorcerer, Discworld and Beneath a Steel Sky to name just a few right within their software. This means you can play the game with the recreated soundtracks triggering at the correct moments, no longer having to rely on the quality of your MIDI playback solution.

Full game soundtrack downloads

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James Woodcock

James is a Freelance Journalist, Copywriter, Author, Blogger & Podcaster specialising in gaming, gadgets and technology, both retro and modern. Ever since he experienced the first controllable pixel movement on the television screen, he has been entranced by the possibilities and rewarding entertainment value generated from these metal and plastic boxes of delight. Writing hundreds of articles, including commentary and reviews on various gaming platforms, whilst also interviewing well-known industry figures for popular online publications. Creator of the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project and host of the Game & Gadget Podcast. View his portfolio for more information.

James Woodcock has 1076 posts and counting. See all posts by James Woodcock

One thought on “ScummVM 20th Anniversary – The Survival of Point and Click Adventure Games

  • An amazing project through and through! A few of these masterpieces I had the privilege to play in their day, some on the PC as intended, some via Amiga emulation (see the original Monkey Island), and what fun I had. A few days ago I started playing Blade Runner again, on my tablet. On a freaking tablet! And I read that I can even play Sanitarium again! Still holding my breath for Discworld Noir support though. It’s on my to-finish-at-some-point-while-I-live-(without-a-walkthrough) list.

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