IBM PC Compatible

The IBM PC emulator
This is ScummVM. It’s actually not an IBM PC emulator but a modern interpreter of most of the adventure games made in the 80s and 90s for IBM PC. Many of these games are available at www.gog.com at affordable prices.

A:      Left mouse click
B:      Right mouse click
Select: Toggle ScummVM menu
Start:  Skip cinematic scene
NVIDIA: Toggle RetroArch menu

ScummVM can emulate an MT32 midi synthesizer which will improve the music in many of the games, but you will need rom dumps from an MT32 and/or CM32L:

CM32L_CONTROL.ROM
CM32L_PCM.ROM
MT32_CONTROL.ROM
MT32_PCM.ROM

The rom files must be placed in the system folder of RetroArch on the SHIELD:

Screen Shot 2016-05-18 at 22.23.58

If you don’t have those roms you can use Adlib emulation or General Midi music instead.

To play the games you need:

  • the game files from the original game installation
  • to add the game inside ScummVM
  • to create a config file for each game used by Advanced Launcher

I will go through each step in this section and then show how to add the games to Advanced Launcher so they can be launched from SPMC.

Adding a new game to the emulator
In this example I will be adding Day of the Tentacle by LucasArts to ScummVM. The game files are:

MONSTER.SOG
TENTACLE.000
TENTACLE.001

First you need to upload the game files to a subfolder under the scummvm rom folder on the SHIELD. I’ve created a folder called tentacle but you can use any name:

Screen Shot 2016-05-18 at 22.28.58

Next create a text file, write -f inside it, and save it with the name you want the game to be called in Advanced Launcher. The extension of the file must be .scum. In this example I will name the file Day of the Tentacle.scum:

Screen Shot 2016-05-19 at 21.57.39

Upload the text file to a subfolder called config under the scummvm folder on the SHIELD. This folder needs to called config or the games will not be detected later by Advanced Launcher. The config folder is where all future .scum files need to be placed:

Screen Shot 2016-05-19 at 21.59.02

When you’ve saved the .scum file do a scan for IBM PC games in Advanced Launcher and the game will be added to the list. Start the game from Advanced Launcher and the user interface for ScummVM will open. This is because the game files have not been added to ScummVM yet and the .scum file is not pointing to the game yet:

The very first time you run ScummVM you must do some basic configuration:

  • You need to set up some paths for save games and MT32 roms
  • You need to decide the default music driver – in the example I will select MT32
  • You need to decide if you want subtitles in games that have speaking voices

When the basic configuration is done you need to add the game to ScummVM. This needs to be done for every game. When you add a game you must note the ID the game gets. And when you are done you must click the Quit button to save the settings:

Notice that the game ID was tentacle. Now you need to edit the .scum file you placed in the config subfolder and write this game ID in the file:

Screen Shot 2016-05-18 at 23.14.00

Now the game has been fully configured to start from Advanced Launcher:

 

You are now ready to play IBM PC games!

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