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A couple of co-workers mentioned gog.com (good ole games) as a great place to pick up old game classics. Of course I couldn’t resist trying to get one of these Good Ole Games working on my linux box and here it is.

The first game I tried was Beneath a Steel Sky, it’s free for download once you sign up for an account. The game uses SCUMMVM which has been ported for Windows, Linux and many other operating systems (I think even palmos!). SCUMMVM is an old adventure game engine origonally written for games such as Indianna Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, the Kings Quest series and many other classic adventure games.

The hard part was getting the game files out of the executable that GOG gives you. During inspection of the exe with a hexeditor I noticed that it was written using the borland installer. Unfortunatly, I know very little about the format and instead of fiddling with the game I decided to run it in wine. As WINE’s site says, wine is not an emulator. Wine allows windows executables to run natively on linux (and other operating systems) with a little work.

When I ran the setup program in wine some of the fonts were a bit screwy and the screen was kind of off, but it was enough to get the game extracted from the executable.

The next thing I had to do was run SCUMMVM and get the game setup and running. When I launched ScummVM it had a start up menu. In this menu I selected “Add Game…” then I browsed to the installation directory of Beneath a Steel Sky (/home/<login>/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/GOG.com/), selected Beneath a Steel Sky then clicked “Choose”. I selected DOS for the platform and clicked “OK”.

Once the game setup was done I clicked “Start” and enjoyed Beneath a Steel Sky without ever having to touch Windows.

Screenshot of Beneath a Steel Sky

Last month I purchased a beatmania controller and a ps2 to play beatmania. Beatmania is a rhythem game like guitar hero except you have a keyboard type controller with a turntable attached. The game is extreamly addictive and fun.

A few years backa friend of mine introduced me to beatmania and showed me how to play it. He told me to be careful how I place my hands on the controller and gave me tips on how to avoid carpel tunnel while playing. At the time I made note of this and really enjoyed playing the game. I enjoyed it so much that I asked him if I could come over and play again.

When I got the controller in (it shipped streight from Japan) I hooked it up to the ps2. I was so excited that I started playing right off, without taking time to place my hands on the controller properly. A couple weeks have gone by now and I think I’ve got some serious problems. I have a sharp pain that shoots up my wrist and my fingers are constantly aching when I use the controller for extended periods of time.

I might go see a doctor about this, but I’m afraid he’s going to tell me that I have to stop playing the game. I think I just need to figure out howto play the game without getting my hand into painful positions.