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Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM.

Actually, there is a work-in-progress engine for it already. It seems playable, but I've only looked at the first few rooms (I'm not familiar with the game) so I couldn't say how well it works yet.

Had no idea Dune 2 and Battle Chess were in public domain, thanks!

As for Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and The Dig, I'd recommend SCUMMVM instead of dosbox. SCUMMVM is a replacement engine for tons of older point-and-clicks that in nearly all cases plays the games better than the original engines. Its also supported on more hardware, including Dreamcast, PSP, DS and Wii.

Except that Maniac Mansion and Secret of Monkey Island are not in the public domain and - as the ScummVM team found out - Lucas Arts are willing to send cease and desist letters to those who think it's abandonware.

Speaking of ScummVM - a few games that run on it are, however, freely distributable by the publisher's permission and downloadable at the ScummVM website. The best one is probably Beneath A Steel Sky but Flight of The Amazon Queen is also good. So putting ScummVM and the free games on it, is certainly a good idea.

Relevant link: www.scummvm.org

This might be too "old and moldy" for a young teen but: http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php Scroll down to "Extras, game downloads". Beneath a Steel Sky is entirely worth the time it takes to download and play. Definitely a staple of my childhood gaming. There are a couple other gems in the free downloads as well.

ScummVM allows you to play some of the classic point-and-click adventure games.

http://www.scummvm.org/

They even offer some freeware games which you can then include on these PCs.

-Beneath The Steel Sky
-Flight of the Amazon Queen
-Lure of the Temptress
-Drascula - The Vampire Strikes Back

http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php#extras

ScummVM allows you to play some of the classic point-and-click adventure games.

http://www.scummvm.org/

They even offer some freeware games which you can then include on these PCs.

-Beneath The Steel Sky
-Flight of the Amazon Queen
-Lure of the Temptress
-Drascula - The Vampire Strikes Back

http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php#extras

Last month I replayed Lucas Arts' Full Throttle (through Dos Box).

You should check out Scumm VM. It plays all the old school Lucasarts games (when they were good), and has been ported to many platforms.

Also, the graphics had reached a level I consider sufficient to support a good game:
-full 3D engine
-Characters and items were clearly recognizable, not reduced to a crude bunch of pixels like in DOOM due to limited computing resources
-the supported resolutions allowed to check out things at a distance, where earlier games (DOOM again) would make things unrecognizable because they shrinked to a few pixels.

So 2d graphics are insufficient to support a good game? I can think of a few exceptions to that. Even if you want to limit it to RPG/FPS hybrids, check out Ultima Underworld. It predates Wolf3d, and is an excellent game.

Suggestions for other Free/OS interactive graphic novel creation tools are welcome.

The ScummVM maintainers recommend using Lua or Python with some layer around DirectX. No, I don't know of any code libraries or other tools to make creation of an interactive graphic novel easier.

IIRC Day of the Tentacle is not for sale anymore. But there is ScummVM and plenty of roms online...

For those who have never played it Beneath a Steel Sky runs on just about anything through ScummVM.
Even better it is now freeware and you can legally download it from the same site for nothing. Go get it.

mix in a little WiFi capability for leeching off hotspots, and you now have a true hacker toy that can lug anywhere!

PDAs and Smartphones just don't cut it. They suck for doing stuff like coding and compiling your own programs.

As the article mentions Google ended up funding a number of Gaming projects. There are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects for a total of over 40 slots.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (projects), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (projects), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (projects), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (projects), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (projects), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (projects), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (projects), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

My own project Thousand Parsec got 8 slots for a number of critical features. One of the coolest is a 3d client, which should make the games much more interesting to look at.

We will also finally have a few more interesting games to actually play, including a clone of Risk in Space and a very interesting game called DroneSec. Finally, we should have some opponents for you to play against as 2 AI clients being developed for our premier RFTS ruleset.

I know I posted roughly this comment in the last GSoC Slashdot announcement but I've been told the information is really useful and some people might have missed it.

On the note about how GSoC effects our project you should take a look at our web stats since we where announced as a GSoC mentor organisation. The increase has been massive!

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool tu rn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the cla ssic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine whic h lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework fo r building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of mul ti-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the ori ginal open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a

I know I posted roughly this comment in the last GSoC Slashdot announcement but I've been told the information is really useful and some people might have missed it.

On the note about how GSoC effects our project you should take a look at our web stats since we where announced as a GSoC mentor organisation. The increase has been massive!

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool tu rn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the cla ssic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine whic h lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework fo r building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of mul ti-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the ori ginal open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a ruleset editor which will make ruleset development significantly easier in the future.

As well, the Open Source Office funded one student in a Summer of Code style outside the program. The student successfully completed the project and we hope the code will soon be rolled out.

Because of the success of our GSoC, our project has actively started to engage with educational instit

Google has been very good to the Open Source gaming community again this year, there are a total of 7 game projects and 5 game related projects.

The following game projects have been accepted,

• Battle for Wesnoth (ideas), a very cool turn based strategy game in the theme of Heroes of Might and Magic.
• BZFlag (ideas), the classic tank first person shooter game. One of the oldest open source games around!
• Linden Lab (ideas), the makers of Second Life the largest "almost game like" online universe.
• ScummVM (ideas), an engine which lets you play all the classic Lucas Arts games and many more!
• Thousand Parsec (ideas), a framework for building 4x empire building games. Been around since 2001 and growing quickly.
• Tux4Kids (ideas), a group of multi-platform open source educational games for children.
• WorldForge (ideas), one of the original open source MMORPG which has even been mentioned on Slashdot multiple times (original called Altima).

The Summer of Code had a huge impact my own project, Thousand Parsec and I hope that it will again have a significant positive impact. GSoC 2007 helped us develop a number of core utilities that the main developers just would not have time to do. These projects should substantially increase the productivity of new contributors and lower the barrier to entry into development. The huge amount of web traffic brought to our website from just being a mentor organisation can clearly be seen in our web statistics.

This year we are planning to concentrate on improving the player experience. The two ways for achieving this is to create more full and interesting games (rulesets) and making the game clients more attractive and easier to access (such as a web-based client and improving the desktop client).

Out of the three students that where selected last year, two passed their final evaluations. The code that the students produced was of both a high quality and quantity.

One of the students projects, the RFTS clone ruleset, is now one of the most complete and popular of our games (rulesets). The student has continued to help with its development and is now currently considering being a mentor this year.

The other successful student made over 220 commits and produced 28,824 lines of code, more than some of our other long term project members! He has developed a ruleset editor which will make ruleset development significantly easier in the future.

As well, the Open Source Office funded one student in a Summer of Code style outside the program. The student successfully completed the project and we hope the code will soon be rolled out.

Because of the success of our GSoC, our project has actively started to engage with educational instit

I couldn't play Icewind Dale II in Windows XP. There are issues with many laptop input drivers screwing with the keyboard in that game. I couldn't resolve the problem, so I switched to linux, copied the Icewind Dale II directory, which was patched and had a no-CD crack, and it runs swimmingly. The only issue is that my linux cursor still shows on top of the game, but I rarely notice it.

I never got into the Windy Dale games, but the Baldur's Gate games work just fine on my Vista-running laptop (and in XP before I installed Vista). Windy Dale II still uses the Infinity Engine just like Baldur's Gate (though obviously updated), so I'm surprised it doesn't work for you.

I also remember trying to play Escape From Monkey Island(tm) in Windows XP, but there was this one part of the game that you couldn't get past (rowing up to Pegnose Pete's swamp shack). When playing The Curse of Monkey Island(tm), the cut-scenes would blaze past in seconds. I had to install Windows 98 to play the games. Compatibility mode didn't cut it. Other games that won't work in XP are Myst and Riven.

I had no problem with Escape From Monkey Island under XP (haven't gone back to play it under Vista), no compatibility switches required. For older Monkey Islands, ScummVM is the way to go. Grim Fandango (EFMI updated the Lua engine from GF) worked great in XP as well, though I did suffer an occasional crash.

Like you, I'm using a laptop (mine from Dell), and aside from having to hack official video drivers in order to get the latest updates I've had no problems with drivers.

There are plenty of good 3D games for the DS. It could probably run a port of any Nintendo 64 title.

The difference is that back in the N64 days, 3D games were the new thing... it was one of the main selling points, the whole new dimension, etc. Nowadays we see that we're nowhere near the bottom of the 2D barrel yet.

And in regards to your last comment... you might find this interesting.

Why not just use ScummVM? As the name suggests, it supports pretty much every LucasArts/Films SCUMM adventure, from MM1 to Curse of Monkey Island (GF and Escape from MI were non-SCUMM), but it also supports Sierra AGI games and others. Pretty much everything you asked for is covered by ScummVM, so long as you can find a copy of the game to play.

Don't forget 0ScummVM! Definitely one of the great open source projects in my opinion.

That experience isn't as easy to capture with PC games I may have played because ironically there's been less of an effort to preserve them. It's not hard to find MAME ROMs for every coin-op game ever made and even the old Apple, Commidore and Texas Instruments games (Parsec FTW!) are still available. But you're probably out of luck if you want to fire up an old Wing Commander, Inherit the Earth or Ultima game.

Unfortunately for me, they are ruining one of my favorite genres. RPG - I am big fan of Baldurs Gate (1&2), Planescape Torment, NWN etc...

If "they" refers to "the gamers who voted with their wallets and didn't buy those games", then you'd be right. If "they" is supposed to be Bioware, keep in mind that they are a company that needs to make money to survive. If nobody's buying a certain type of game, they have no incentive to build another game of that type.

RPG: Ruined (for me) by FP/TP view.

Did you try KOTOR or Jade Empire? That's pretty much what Mass Effect should be like. If those gave you motion sickness, then it sucks to be you.

Adventure: Basically dead.

They're not quite dead yet. The new Sam & Max games seem to be doing quite well. I was disappointed that the Bone games didn't do better, but SM makes up for it.

Well, just go take a look at the ScummVM downloads page, where you can see all the ports of ScummVM available. I'll leave it up to you to guess which one they ported it from, but PS3 isn't even on that list.

There are also a bunch of other Open Source Game projects you can work on, here is a short list.

• ScummVM - For all you adventure freaks.
• bzflag - that age old tank game.
• Ogre3d - one of the best OSS 3d engines out there.
• Thousand Parsec - Go conqure the universe!

If you are interested in game programming you should give them a look.

There are also a bunch of other Open Source Game projects you can work on, here is a short list.

• ScummVM - For all you adventure freaks.
• bzflag - that age old tank game.
• Ogre3d - one of the best OSS 3d engines out there.
• Thousand Parsec - Go conqure the universe!

Beneath a Steel Sky was excellent - and is available as freeware and runs perfectly under ScummVM.

That it is generally a non-trivial amount of work to update the game to run on modern systems. I mean the way you dealt with things in the DOS was was just totally different from now. For graphics most games would do something along the lines of directly write information to the VGA card's registers then call an interrupt to switch it to a non-directly supported mode (320x240 with multiple buffers was popular, called Mode X often). You'd then directly write to the off-screen video RAM and flip the page when you were ready to display.

Ok so there's just no such thing now in Windows. You don't directly access anything in hardware. You instead call upon an API for it (usually DirectX). This means that to make it directly Windows compatible you have to totally re-write large parts of the code. You aren't just hacking one little thing to be different, it's a different way of dealing with a computer.

The only other option is emulation. You leave the program as is and have something that translates those direct hardware access instructions in to calls to APIs Windows can deal with. That's precisely what DOSBox or the NTVDM do already.

I just don't think you'd find the market to be large enough to justify the development cost of a Windows port.

However, as to the Lucas Arts games, you are in luck. Turns out that all those adventure games they made were designed with the same basic software. It was called the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, or SCUMM. Basically they developed a tool to put together Maniac Mansion. Well when they made another game like it, they started with the same tool and updated it. The upshot is that emulating that engine has become an easy way to make lots of those old games run, and that has been done. See http://www.scummvm.org/ for the project.

Same here. Not only is it the principle of the thing, but to continue to use Sam and Max as an example, I still have my copy of the first game. I loved it then, and I still play it now. Assuming this game is as good as it should be, I want to be sure that I'll be able to play it in 15 years on whatever the future equivalent to ScummVM is.

I didn't expect this to hit Slashdot, so we were a bit unprepared for the amount of feedback :) But yeah, its all legal and above board. A project like ScummVM isn't really something anyone would expect Paypal to take issue with :) For those that like reading about lost causes, heres our (denied) appeal (including Paypals initial complaint and the response to our appeal).

Dear xxxxx,

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

We are sorry you are disappointed.

Sincerely,
PayPal, Acceptable Use Policy Department
PayPal, an eBay Company

Original Message Follows:

http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?p=12891
http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/09/04/1227227.s html

that just sucks, I will never ever use paypal again, unless you take
that back!

You are quite welcome! I have enjoyed Sam & Max and DOTT on a variety of platforms thanks to the great work of ScummVM's team. I appreciate the thanks. Game on!

A hacked DS would be cheaper. ;) But of course there are already Linux and Mac versions of SCUMMVM that will allow you to play your old LucasArts games without paying Redmond a red cent.

A relevant link here is ScummVM, an OSS project to make these games compatible with all modern systems. If you own the original disks, you can use ScummVM to play Sam & Max natively on Linux, Mac OS X, even your PDA.

that would be http://www.scummvm.org

Having suffered WineX and now Cedega, my subscription was never able to provide gameplay for any of the games I enjoy. My list of games is not very long and for the most part they aren't too demanding, but they simply won't install or play correctly under Cedega.

It's frustrating and it means I need to keep a Windows 98 partition so I can boot and play games. There probably isn't a good fix for any of these legacy games, but going forward there is a lot that vendors could do.

Game manufacturers should agree on a platform using an application virtual machine implementation similar to Java or the Microsoft CLR. Examples of this include things like ScummVM or MAME -- but a true gaming system would require 3D capability and some hardware access (eg: play audio CD). For this kind of virtual platform to work, major game vendors need to band together and garner support from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Imagine the benefit! We could play a game in our Windows PC, Macintosh, XBox or even portable GameBoy. The _same_ game. Console vendors could choose to implement features of the game machine in hardware or software, and it might even open up the market to competition from third party gaming consoles. Game makers would cut expenses by developing to a single virtual platform, and they would not need to recode popular titles to multiple platforms... they would just work.

It won't really adversely affect the console vendors, since gamers who want a console would still buy one. Console vendors will need to provide other value to help increase sales, which has already become a reality for the XBox and WMC. Users with PC's could purchase either third-party emulators or download open source implementations when the become available. There should be a reference implementation suitable for running under Windows, and other platforms can follow from that.

But one my all time favourite adventure games is Beneath A Steel Sky. Props to Revolution for releasing it as freeware, and giving the ScummVM team the source code and documentation that enabled them to support it in ScummVM. It's on the ScummVM download page, and is well worth playing if you're into adventure games.

Telltale Games are apparently releasing the new Sam and Max game this autumn. I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Space Quest 1 VGA was perhaps a poor choice of example, since it *is* easy to run and play. Easier than when it was new, in fact. Rather than the old IRQ/Highmem/Soundblaster/blahblah DOS config nightmare, I just installed NAGI and copied my old game disks into the folder. See also FreeSCI for later Sierra games, and ScummVM for the lucasarts games.

You're right about hanging back on the lifecycle, though. I bought all of the last generation of consoles with a pile of controllers for a sum total of $180. It can pay to wait.

How easy it is for you to find old PC bits probably depends on your particular circle of friends. In this regard, it pays to know a couple of those "buy the latest all the time" guys, because they are perpetually unloading last years' gear at cut-rate prices.

Actually there are a few, sony ericson p910i i think is on ce the mda series of phones with t-mobile and the the xda series from o2, the m2000 from orange. they run wince as well.
The HP iPAQ hw6500 Mobile Messenger , sprints i930 , samsung i730...
see link below
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/default.msp x

incidently active sync is now at 4.2 (link above)

one of nicest phones i've seen lately is the mda pro
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?revie wid=165

generally it is very nice but the screens still 320 by 256 which makes remote desktop more awkward than it could be.
http://www.fpsece.net/index.html playstation emulator for ce
http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php allows you to run things like flight of the amazon queen and beneath a steelsky on ce and as you mentioned there is java gaming as well.

The built in browser IE isn't great so opera may well be a welcome improvement. (id prefer a version of firefox thou)
  Very little reason to make a phone CE? for microsoft there is if you use MSOffice and Outlook there is.

and of course there is GPS which can run while playing your mp3's and be your phone too.

finally can i recommend velcro i put the hook half in a suitable space on my dashboard and the other half on my phone battery pack.

you don't really want to leave your gps in the car its likely to get broken into for this alone. being your phone too means its with you.

• Sam and Max
  
• Day of the Tentacle
  
• Full Throttle
  

Another genre that hasn't got much attention recently is the graphical adventure game -- Lucasarts (Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island, etc) and Sierra (King's Quest, etc) used to make terrific games in this genre, but after a burst of interest, around the time CD-ROM drives were introduced, for the Myst series, I haven't heard much about them.

The Lucasarts adventure game team largely got back together and is still producing games, but no longer at Lucasarts.

If you're interested in playing some of the classic Lucasarts games, you can do so in a nice cross-platform environment using the GPL ScummVM. At least one previously-proprietary game (Beneath a Steel Sky) that has even been released under a free license of some sort and is being distributed on the ScummVM website. I'm not a big fan of Sierra's games, but you can play their classic games using Sarien and FreeSCI.

One thing that I really miss in games these days is the healthy portions of humor present in many of these older adventures -- usually not scatological or crude, but just happy and upbeat tidbits in the game that made you laugh while playing.

For the Monkey Island type games, are you looking for something like ScummVM?

What I'm doing is just playing through the great Lucas Arts games I never got around to or haven't tried using ScummVM.

Who knows how many hours of gameplay that's worth. Heck, there's two free games to download, I've got four or five more games on the shelf I bought from a friend, including Loom and Sam and Max, still in it's original box. The two I have played, Monkey Island and Full Throttle both are easily good enough to deserve a replay.

Of course, that doesn't matter any more. The open-source ScummVM project can play The Dig on most computer systems these days. The only problem that remains is finding the game.

...and no, you can't have mine!

Does anyone even make adventure games like Sam and Max anymore? The latest console games might be really good, but they're likely not going to appeal to a Monkey Island fan.

Sadly, nobody makes adventure games like Sam and Max any more. However, that's not to say that nobody makes adventure games anymore, or nobody makes games like Sam and Max. For the latter, you should certainly pick up Psychonauts for your favorite platform. It's not an adventure game, but it has some adventure elements to go along with its action.

For adventure games, there are still plenty (though sadly none in the style of LucasArts like S&M, MI, GF, MM, etc):

• Still Life
• Syberia and Syberia II
• The Longest Journey, which is supposed to have a sequel soon.
• Indigo Prophecy hasn't shipped yet, but it looks promising (played the demo on the latest Official Xbox Magazine)
• All of the CSI and Law and Order games, if you're into those.
• All of the Myst games

Don't forget things like ScummVM ( http://www.scummvm.org/ ) and the other engines that allows you to run old games (There's some for the old Sierra games, and some for old text-based games too).

http://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=scummvm

http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php

I still love the SCUMM games like Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam & Max Hit the Road. The multiple-endings idea in particular in particular was brilliant (even though that aspect was limited to Maniac Mansion). It ticked me off when I couldn't get them to play on XP... (Even with 98, I had to "reboot in DOS mode" and pull a few other tricks to get them to play.)

The great thing is, with ScummVM, you can play them on Linux, Windows, Mac, BeOS, and even a Palm or Pocket PC! I just recently re-played Day of the Tentacle on my Treo. Worked great, except for some sound problems. It does take a bit of configuration to get it going on some systems, but it's well worth it.

You do have to have the original CD or floppies that the games came on, so make sure that you dig those out before you bother with the install... but once you dig those out, you'll be microwaving hamsters in no time!

I can't say I fully agree. I'd say this emulator (SNES-sation) and others (PGen, MAME, etc.) just lack optimization. Heck, even the authors of these emulators said that.

The Emotion Engine is not a jackass CPU, but it ought to be enough for the more popular emulators. I know it's Apples vs. Oranges, but I see that the PS2 has a CPU performance roughly comparable to a 400~500Mhz Pentium 2 or 3, and that's around the mininum requeriments for most of the emulators out there (for the PC). I don't think the memory is a problem either: remember, those 32Mb the PS2 have doesn't have the overhead of an OS, and most of these emulators requirements on PC are around 64Mb or less, and as with computers you have to take the OS overhead in account, the amount of memory that an emulator really uses (with a game running) would rarely go beyond around 24Mb (maybe with the exception of MAME, for some recent games... and the MAME codebase is a monolithic mess anyway, so I guess he's the less feasible emulator for the PS2).

So, I don't think the problem is the hardware. I rather think the problem is either a) The API to program for the hardware, or the devkits available are just a bitch to use, or b) The emu authors are just lazy (or out of time, as they usually say). I used to believe in the latter, but lately I've been believing on the former - just look at all the emulators available for the PS2. Most of them haven't been updated for a long time, and on many the authors admit they lack proper optimization, and many others just released a single version and then dropped any further development. Many of those are open-source, still, no one takes over. Why? Is it really just lack of interest?

Then again, ScummVM will have a PS2 port... let's see when it is released...

Ok, only FYI (as many of these topics were covered in other replies) and certainly not for karma (as this topic is dead at this point), here is the definitive guide for playing Lucasarts/Sierra games on modern PC's:

First, Linux PC's:
Lucasarts games: http://www.scummvm.org/
AGI Sierra games (Lsl1, Sq1, Sq2, Kq1-3, etc): http://sarien.sourceforge.net/
SCI0 Sierra games (Sq3, Lsl2-3, Kq4): http://freesci.linuxgames.com/
SCI1 Sierra games (Sq4-5, Lsl5-6, Kq5, etc) and oddballs like willy beamish and all those old games like tunnels of armageddon: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
Windows Sierra games (Sq6, Lsl7, etc): http://www.transgaming.com/ (or apt-get install wine)

Any platform, Sierra games: This guy has done the unpossible, writing timing fix patches for the games so you don't have to kludge them with slowdown utils: http://geocities.com/belzorash/

Windows PC's:
LucasArts games: http://www.scummvm.org/
AGI Sierra games: http://www.agidev.com/nagi.html
SCI Sierra games: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
Windows games:
http://home.planet.nl/~harms646/larry7.html
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancement s/ResChange.shtml
Games that just don't work right:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

And just for grins, because it's freaking awesome:
http://www.agdinteractive.com/
http://people.freenet.de/lucasfangames/maniac/game s_eng.htm
Good luck, let me know if you have any problems.