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What with recent talk about CMI's music implementation being iffy in ScummVM, I thought it might be worth trying to compile some of the known behavioral differences in the SCUMM games when comparing the original executable (as run in an emulator like DOSBox or, for you nuts out there, an actual old IBM or Amiga) to ScummVM's interpretation. I'm doing this mainly for my own benefit, as I get the impression certain folks are aware of more discrepancies than I am, but I'll kick things off with some that I know about: - Most obviously, ScummVM does not reproduce the original UI for things like pause state, "Are you sure you want to quit?" and Save/Load menus. In several of the games, the save menus were pretty generic, but Maniac Mansion for example gave you a unique image (Syd running away from Green Tentacle in v1, Green Tentacle's band jamming out in v2), and Last Crusade had a graphic representation of your IQ score. - In Maniac Mansion, saving was not allowed once you reached Dr. Fred's lab. Hitting F5 at that point brought up this text: "The Meteor has control of your computer and he won't let you save the game." Last Crusade similarly wouldn't let you save once you hit the Grail Temple, as an in-game sign warns. ScummVM lets you freely save your state in these final sequences. - Starting I think with Hit the Road, the games shipped with custom launchers that ScummVM bypasses. Unlike the creepy teal/purple one for configuring sound on Fate of Atlantis and Day of the Tentacle, these GUIs were visually designed in the flavor of the game. - Maniac Mansion NES is rather graphically glitchy, most noticeably when characters climb thin air instead of the stairs to the third floor landing. ScummVM also makes it so that the steel security door is always open as it is in the PC versions. That is done to bypass the copy protection - a "crack" which became part of the official executable when bundled with DOTT - but there was never copy protection in the NES version. The security door was simply unlocked. - CMI's iMUSE isn't faithfully replicated in ScummVM. It appears that local hero AndywinXp corrected this within the last year. Note that folks who purchased CMI off of GOG/Steam will probably need to grab the latest dev build of ScummVM, as the version that comes bundled with the game almost surely predates the merge of this fix.

Maniac Mansion anthology including VHS of the TV series wedged in between. Make everyone suffer Dr Fred’s pain in DOTT when he regrets making the series.

It also let you configure your sound boards! Which may have resulted in nothing more than appending an "s", an "a", or an "i" as an argument to the EXE, but consider the cultural losses of denying modern players this screen.

CMI's implementation of iMUSE doesn't seem to be fully functional in ScummVM. The best locations to conduct a comparison would be the Barbery Coast and the Goodsoup Hotel. The original interpreter transitions between the themes smoothly, while ScummVM abruptly jumps from one to the other.

@ATMachineYeah the ScummVM project is...known for that. I don't want to rag too much on ScummVM because Lord knows it's been a godsend for as long as it has existed. You can't beat it for convenience or for the ability to play various wacky versions of titles that you may find yourself for totally innocent reasons not happening to possess the executable (or maybe even the platform) for. But I think the quiet disregard of the native interpreters over time poses an archival issue. I have mixed feelings because there was a time when I would have considered it a pipe dream to have all the LucasArts SCUMM games officially available again. And now, here we are: they're all easily obtainable from GOG and Steam...bundled with ScummVM.* Which I don't object to, as it's free and a great way to ensure every game "just works" out the box for roughly every end user imaginable. But because ScummVM functionally replaces those EXEs, it seems Lucasfilm saw no need to toss it in with the data files while they were at it. Luckily, Archive.org is surprisingly well stocked in this regard, but it's kind of sad that even with the games legally available, people are still left to turn to Warez sites if they want to pursue the option of running the games exactly as they did when they shipped. Or, worse, they have to put down the cheese popcorn in order to walk to their closet and disinter their old bit-rotting floppies. *I believe the Steam versions of Indy3, Indy4, Full Throttle and The Dig may use the upgrades executables Aaron Giles made at LucasArts circa 2002, which is cool. Shame LEC didn't spend the extra five cents to do all the games...unless they did and just never cared enough to put them out.

ScummVM uses the wrong CGA palette for Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island. I haven't compared the older games. The original interpreter uses the default high intensity cyan/magenta palette as can be seen this screenshot from DOSBox: ScummVM uses the low intensity variant for some reason. It also uses RGB values for each colour that appear to be slightly off compared to the values I can find everywhere else. The CGA cards originally controlled their monitors using different voltage levels instead of digital values so it'll always be an approximation, but it's still a bit odd.

I know, right? This screen is beautiful.

You put a lot of work in this! Thank you! What exactly is the advantage of playing CMI natively? I heard there were some sound issues with ScummVM, but I never really noticed this when playing. You probably don’t have a Mac launcher up your sleeve somewhere, do you? 😜

You mean like these? (Laverne and Hoagie will follow soon) I think the Indy games would offer the best chance for proper merch. A leather-bound grail diary, an actual grail-replica, the knight's shield rubbing (for LC), Nur-Ab-Sal necklace, horned statue, orichalcum sugar beads (mmh), stone disc replicas.