If you like adventures of the ‘point and click’ variety, you’ll no doubt be aware – and hopefully using – ScummVM to play the wealth of old games it brings to the platform, most of which never touched RISC OS when they were first released for other computers and operating systems.
The software acts as a ‘virtual machine’, and was developed so that games written using a specific system could be played on modern platforms, without the need to run them in an emulator.
Coming from LucasArts, the system originally targeted by ScummVM was the ‘Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion’ (SCUMM), and was itself intended to aid with development of a specific game, but subsequently used for other titles. ScummVM has since developed beyond the LucasArts system, and supports games developed using a number of other engines, bringing even more games back to life on modern systems.
The latest release of ScummVM (to version 2.6.1) is described by its developers – one of whom is Cameron Cawley, who looks after the RISC OS build – as a maintenance release, code-named ‘Incremental Escapism‘; rather than add new features this time around, work on this update was to improve those added in the last main release.
