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ScummVM - good enough for Atari 09 Jul, 2009 / Comments: 6

By Jason


We're really late getting on this, but it's interesting enough to make a post about. You may recall that last summer, select titles from the early Humongous adventure catalog (which were SCUMM-powered) were ported to the Wii last summer by Atari, the current owner of those properties. Some of you joked that Atari should just bundle ScummVM with those games so that they wouldn't have to update them themselves, and apparently Atari felt the same way, because that's precisely what they did.

As ScummVM is under GPL, it is actually free to use as Atari did, but they didn't even bother to credit the program's usage, leading to a legal situation between them and the ScummVM guys. The hilarity (well, I'm sure those two parties don't find it particularly funny) is documented here.

In other ScummVM news, some of you might have been wondering if the news Steam releases will be compatible with the emulator. Sev of ScummVM has addresed that in his blog as well. The short story is that it would be easy enough to make them compatible, but they're holding off in case LEC decides to develop their own ports for other platforms, and to nurture the possibility of cooperation between the two parties.
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6 Comments

  • Huz on 09 Jul, 2009, 20:07…
    Oh man. That's a huge cockup by Atari. It would be interesting to hear if there are repurcussions for their subcontractor, or for Atari themselves since they've seemingly violated Ninty's SDK licence, but I don't suppose we'll get to hear about it!

    Very sad for these games on the Wii, though.
  • jp-30 on 09 Jul, 2009, 21:25…
    They're still on the shelves here. I picked up Freddi Fish a few weeks ago. I guess they'll become collector's items if stock is supposed to be destroyed.

    Might have to go and get some Spy Fox and Putt-Putt...
  • clone2727 on 09 Jul, 2009, 22:42…
    Putt-Putt wasn't ported to the Wii with the other ones. Only Spy Fox, Freddi, and Pajama Sam were.
  • Capn_Nacho on 10 Jul, 2009, 14:59…
    HERESY
  • clone2727 on 10 Jul, 2009, 20:32…
    Yes, I have always loved Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo. Good ol' Ron...
  • syntheticgerbil on 09 Jul, 2009, 19:20…
    I'm glad you guys posted this. That whole story pisses me off, but it is very funny.

    I bet Mistic Studios thought they were pretty damn slick.