You know, ever since I complained about the lack of games on the iPhone, it seems like everyday has something new to entertain users who find themselves as bereft as I have. As if mere native games weren’t enough, one intrepid group of coders has ported emulator ScummVM to the iPhone. If you’re not familiar with ScummVM, it’s an emulator that allows you to play several adventure games originally created by LucasArts back in the day (“the day,” in this case referring to late 1980s through the 1990s). Titles such as Maniac Mansion, Curse of Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis all rely on the Scumm engine.
And now you can play said games on your iPhone (or, presumably, iPod touch). Installing ScummVM will, of course, require that you jailbreak your phone and use Installer.app. The iPhone version of the emulator incorporates UI design specific to the multi-touch interface. More than a dozen games are fully compatible, with another few having partial compatibility. The emulator itself has some known issues, notably that the graphics don’t take up the full screen, instead keeping their native resolution (which, sadly, is less than the iPhone’s own resolution). In any case, if you’re not satisfied with the NES emulator, perhaps this will be more up your alley.
