ScummVM 2026.4.0 adds 194 classic games for its 25th anniversary

The ScummVM team released version 2026.4.0 on October 11, adding support for 194 games and 12 new engines to mark the open-source project's 25th anniversary. Initial builds are available now for Windows, macOS (including PowerPC hardware), Sega Dreamcast, Haiku, and OpenDingux, with additional platform ports following shortly.

Swedish programmer Ludvig "ludde" Strigeus pushed the very first public commit to the ScummVM repository in early October 2001. Strigeus, who later created the BitTorrent client μTorrent and the open-source transport sim OpenTTD before becoming a tech architect at Spotify, originally started the project just to reimplement LucasArts' proprietary SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) engine. Rather than emulating old computer hardware, ScummVM replaces a game's original executable entirely, letting the original data files run natively on modern operating systems. Twenty-five years later, the software has expanded far beyond point-and-click adventures and now operates on a faster quarterly, year-based versioning schedule.

FMV rail shooters, 1950s gore, and 140 Wintermute games

The 194 newly supported titles span an absurdly wide range of PC history. The headliners for LucasArts fans are Star Wars: Rebel Assault (1993) and its 1995 sequel, Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire. The first Rebel Assault combined pre-rendered 3D CGI backdrops with arcade rail-shooting, selling over 1.5 million copies and practically forcing PC gamers to buy a CD-ROM drive in 1993, while the sequel is famous for shooting original live-action Star Wars footage.

On the opposite end of the tonal spectrum is Merit Studios' Harvester (1996), Gilbert P. Austin's surreal, hyper-violent point-and-click satire of 1950s small-town Americana and media censorship. Getting digitized live-action gore from 1996 running cleanly alongside family-friendly cartoon adventures is a funny juxtaposition, and I'm curious how well the engine handles some of Harvester's notoriously clunky combat triggers. It's joined by FTL Games' 1987 classic Dungeon Master, the real-time grid-based RPG that became the best-selling game on the Atari ST and laid the groundwork for Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore.

A huge chunk of the 2026.4.0 game count comes from Dead:Code's Wintermute engine, which brings over 140 adventures into the fold at once, including Alpha Polaris, Art of Murder: FBI Confidential, Barrow Hill: The Dark Path, Dark Fall: Lost Souls, Face Noir, and The Lost Crown. Her Interactive's long-running mystery franchise also gets six mid-2000s entries: Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch, Curse of Blackmoor Manor, Secret of the Old Clock, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, Danger by Design, and The Creature of Kapu Cave.

The rest of the additions cover decades of European and American adventure gaming:

• Nine Spanish comic book adventures from Alcachofa Soft's Mortadelo y Filemón series
• Dracula: Resurrection, Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary, Amerzone: The Explorer's Legacy, The Messenger (Louvre: The Final Curse), and The Cameron Files: The Secret at Loch Ness
• MicroProse's Dragonsphere and Return of the Phantom, plus Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestless and Once Upon a Forest
• The Fool's Errand, Lord Avalot d'Argent, Der Schatz im Silbersee, and both Eagle Eye Mysteries titles

Seventeen updated engines and faster AdLib audio

Beyond the new additions, the team overhauled 17 existing engines. The Hopkins FBI engine is finally complete now that developers implemented its Wolfenstein 3D-style shooter mini-game, and Sanitarium had its missing walking sounds restored. Westwood's Kyra engine gained an automap for the Eye of the Beholder RPGs alongside support for Korean fan translations of The Legend of Kyrandia.

Revolution Software's 1992 fantasy adventure Lure of the Temptress got a fix for a long-standing pathfinding bug. The team also squashed several bugs in The Riddle of Master Lu, which isn't easy to patch because all of its game logic is hardcoded rather than sitting in external scripts. Might and Magic picked up visual touch-ups and crash fixes, the TsAGE engine added Roland MT-32 audio support, and the original SCUMM engine improved compatibility for Commodore 64 and early Windows Humongous Entertainment releases.

Under the hood, ScummVM 2026.4.0 speeds up audio mixing with a faster OPL3 AdLib sound chip emulator and adds support for another archive installer format, meaning fewer games require you to run their original MS-DOS or Windows setup programs just to extract the data files. Even the Atari port got optional integration with the nFM sound library. Shipping active builds for PowerPC Macs and the Sega Dreamcast in 2026 is ridiculous in the best possible way.

Pick up Harvester on Humble Bundle.

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