Old school gaming emulator for all the console classics

ScummVM may not sound like the most fetching name for a program but old school gaming fans won’t care about that.

If Double Dragon, Outrun and Kick Off 2 all played an important part of your misspent childhood, then ScummVM is for you. Note, however, that ScummVM does not come pre-installed with games – it’s strictly an emulator only and you’ll have to find the RAM files for games yourself. The beauty of ScummVM is that it works for several platforms at once so no matter if you had a Spectrum, Amiga or even PSP, ScummVM will run it for you.

ScummVM works by replacing the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed. Among the systems ScummVM supports are Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, PocketPC, PalmOS, AmigaOS, BeOS, OS/2, PSP, PS2 and SymbianOS. Although as I said, no games come bundled with ScummVM, the developer does provide some free ones to download on the homepage, including Flight of the Amazon Queen, Lure of the Temptress and Broken Sword 1. It’s a shame there aren’t more than this, although you can buy most classic titles on Amazon and eBay.

The downside of ScummVM is that, in an effort to keep it flexible for cross platform use, it doesn’t have a very slick OS X-styled interface. However, this isn’t a big deal because you only use ScummVM to launch the games, not play them. The latest release of ScummVM features many back-end port improvements meaning you should find it far more stable than before.

If you hark back to the classics and don’t want to mess around with several different emulators at once, then ScummVM is a great multipurpose choice.

What’s new in this version:New Ports:Added Nintendo 64 Port. (Actually added in 1.1.0, but forgot to mention it. oops)General:Fixed several minor bugs here and there.Drascula:Fixed regression that caused some texts to always be in English, even when using another language. (#2970211 – DRASCULA: missing german translation)KYRA:Fixed a bug which caused the DOS versions to crash before the credits when AdLib music is selected.LURE:Fixed several memory leaks.Corrected problems in the handling of followers when blocked from performing actions by closed doors between rooms.Solved issues with Goewin not always correctly following the player out of the cavesTinsel:Fix video playback regression in Discworld 2.Parallaction:Fix several crashes and other regressions in Nippon Safes, including bugs 2969211, 2969232, 2969234, 2969257, 2970141.Wii/GameCube port: (Also forgot to mention in 1.1.0)Added support for games using 16bit graphics.Complete GFX overhaul (new video modes, better performance, picture smoothing, fine grained overscan settings).Added a new options dialog for Wii/Gamecube specific settings.Fixed a GFX glitch on savegame thumbnails.Added support for SMB mountpoints (Samba/Windows shares).Added an on-screen console, which is shown when ScummVM exits abnormally.Fixed a couple of crashes when using Ogg/Vorbis encoded sound files. See the bundled READMII.txt file for more information.SP port: (Also forgot to mention in 1.1.0)Added plugin support which allows the PSP Phat to run every game.Added a new virtual keyboard optimized for rapid D-Pad input.

Changes

• What’s new in this version:New Ports:Added Nintendo 64 Port. (Actually added in 1.1.0, but forgot to mention it. oops)General:Fixed several minor bugs here and there.Drascula:Fixed regression that caused some texts to always be in English, even when using another language. (#2970211 – DRASCULA: missing german translation)KYRA:Fixed a bug which caused the DOS versions to crash before the credits when AdLib music is selected.LURE:Fixed several memory leaks.Corrected problems in the handling of followers when blocked from performing actions by closed doors between rooms.Solved issues with Goewin not always correctly following the player out of the cavesTinsel:Fix video playback regression in Discworld 2.Parallaction:Fix several crashes and other regressions in Nippon Safes, including bugs 2969211, 2969232, 2969234, 2969257, 2970141.Wii/GameCube port: (Also forgot to mention in 1.1.0)Added support for games using 16bit graphics.Complete GFX overhaul (new video modes, better performance, picture smoothing, fine grained overscan settings).Added a new options dialog for Wii/Gamecube specific settings.Fixed a GFX glitch on savegame thumbnails.Added support for SMB mountpoints (Samba/Windows shares).Added an on-screen console, which is shown when ScummVM exits abnormally.Fixed a couple of crashes when using Ogg/Vorbis encoded sound files. See the bundled READMII.txt file for more information.SP port: (Also forgot to mention in 1.1.0)Added plugin support which allows the PSP Phat to run every game.Added a new virtual keyboard optimized for rapid D-Pad input.