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.

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

• 2001 – Oct: First commit for ScummVM
• 2002 – Feb: SEGA Dreamcast port of ScummVM
• 2002 – Apr: Sam & Max Hit the Road completable
• 2002 – Mar: Code freeze, moving to C++
• 2002 – Aug: Loom completable and other Lucas Arts games being tested
• 2002 – Mar: Simon the Sorcerer supported
• 2002 – Jun: Lucas Arts takes a legal stance against ScummVM…

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!

• 2002 – Dec: The Dig and Simon the Sorcerer 2 support added
• 2003 – Aug: ScummVM 0.5.0 released with support for Beneath a Steel Sky, made possible thanks to Revolution Software supplying ScummVM the original assembly source code
• 2004 – Mar: The classic versions of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken supported, along with Full Throttle, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2
• 2004 – Dec: Added preliminary support for 26 Humongous Entertainment titles
• 2005 – Oct: Support for Inherit the Earth and Gobliiins
• 2006 – Jan: ScummVM Music Enhancement Project begins, created by James Woodcock
• 2006 – Nov: Future Wars supported
• 2006 – Dec: Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer supported
• 2007 – Feb: Simon the Sorcerer enhanced soundtrack for use with ScummVM granted permission for release by Simon Woodruff
• 2007 – Jun: Sierra AGI engine: Space Quest I & II, King’s Quest I-III and many more supported, including a vast number of fan-made games
• 2007 – Nov: ScummVM ported to iPhone announced
• 2007 – Nov: Lure of the Temptress support added
• 2008- Aug: The Legend of Kyrandia, Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back and others supported
• 2009 – Jan: ScummVM announces Discworld Music Enhancement Project Completion
• 2009 – Feb: The 7th Guest supported
• 2009 – Nov: ScummVM version 1.0.0 is released
• 2010 – Oct: SCI engine support for games including King’s Quest I-VI, Police Quest 1-3, Quest for Glory I-III, Space Quest up to V and more
• 2011 – Feb: Work moved to Git
• 2011 – May: Support for Toonstruck
• 2012 – Feb…

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.

• 2013 – May: 4 New Engines added
• 2013 – Oct: ScummVM The Movie! – 12th Anniversary Celebration
• 2014 – Dec: The Neverhood supported
• 2016 – Mar: Fan title Broken Sword 2.5: The Return of the Templars supported
• 2016 – Mar: Myst supported
• 2017 – Dec: ScummVM 2.0 is released with an additional 23 games supported
• 2019 – Oct: Blade Runner supported
• 2020 – Oct: ScummVM Project Officially Merging with ResidualVM
• 2020 – Nov: Little Big Adventure support added
• 2021 – Oct: ScummVM celebrate 20th anniversary!

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