ScummVM 2.5.0 is the first version to support ‘2.5D’ games, the announcement explains, thanks to a merger with fellow vintage video game platform ResidualVM. So say hello to support for Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey, and Myst 3: Exile. (Yeah, Grim Fandango has an official remaster these days, but maybe you want the original too?) It adds support for more games too, including Crusader: No Remorse and Little Big Adventure. And it now supports interactive fiction games made in Glulx as well as games made in Adventure Game Studio version 2.5 or higher. That’s squillions more games right there. Also new: better support for Retina displays; “a major rewrite” for the Nintendo DS version; Korean and Japanese translations for the ScummVM GUI; and more. See the patch notes for everything and download over here. ScummVM isn’t an emulator, it doesn’t recreate the operating system games originally ran in. It replaces whole game engines with its own new compatible versions. So sure, it makes them play nicely with modern processer speeds and screen resolutions and such, but ScummVM also adds new features like cloud support, and isn’t just limited to PC, bringing many games to iPhone and Android and Nintendo Switch and… lots of things. It’s good. Projects like ScummVM played a huge part in keeping interest in adventure games alive after big developers wandered off into other genres. As well as sustaining hoary veterans, they preserved history and made it possible for new generations to experience these games without a huge amount of faff. This ongoing interest is probably also part of why we’ve seen a lot of adventure game remasters and remakes. ScummVM has also paved the way for long-unavailable games to return to stores; GOG started selling Blade Runner after ScummVM added support, for example. Thanks to all the ScummVM devs over the years!
