ScummVM

An alternative open source game engine/interpreter for LucasArts SCUMM-based games (essentially all their adventure games, like Day of the Tentacle). Its main purpose is simply to avoid you having to use the original game engines, which were mainly DOS-based. Instead, you simply provide the game data files from the floppy disks or CD, and it lets you run them under any operating system it supports: currently Windows 95 and above, Linux, FreeBSD, BeOS, Solaris, MacOS 9 and X, Dreamcast, MorphOS and Irix. SDL is used to provide this portability.

Although it isn't perfect, it works well for many games, and it's improving all the time. Most games which are supported at all are fully playable. At the time of writing these games are:

LucasArts - All their SCUMM games work:

• Maniac Mansion
• Zak McKracken, including the 256-color FmTowns version.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Loom
• Monkey Island 1
• Monkey Island 2
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Day of the Tentacle
• Sam & Max (the highway minigame isn't fully working yet)
• Full Throttle
• The Dig
• Curse of Monkey Island

Other - Games which work either using a SCUMM clone or a SCUMM-like system:

• Many of the Putt-Putt games.
• Broken Sword 1
• Broken Sword 2
• Beneath a Steel Sky - available for free from the scummvm website!
• Flight of the Amazon Queen - available for free from the scummvm website!
• Simon the Sorceror 1 and 2

Although it is mostly targetted towards the data files from the PC versions of the games, some of the Amiga versions are supported, and again, support for this is improving all the time. Also, you may well want to rip the music from the versions of games with Redbook (Audio CD) audio on them to your hard drive as mp3s or ogg vorbis, so you don't have to have the CD in the drive for the music, and again this is well-supported.

It does have other advantages over the original games themselves, other than the (obvious) improved compatibility with modern platforms. Thanks to the wonders of anti-aliasing filters (which you may have seen in other emulator-type programs such as MAME), the graphics can be improved to look almost modern. There is a built-in debugger for finding out how the games work and fiddling, and copy protection is avoided (although you still get to see the often entertaining copy protection entry screens).

The project has been contacted by LucasArts due to legal troubles in the past, however this seems to have been over a misunderstanding and scummvm is believed to be entirely legal.

And after reading all that, you'll be wanting to know how to get the darn thing! So, run along to http://scummvm.sf.net/, download it, grab that old scratched Day of the Tentacle CD (or go and buy one on eBay) and enjoy yourself playing!