I have mentioned before how I was unable to get Dave Taylor's original port of Doom to work as it was built as an outdated a.out binary rather than ELF. Since then, I stumbled on an article by Jason Heiss that describes how to load the binfmt_aout kernel module to attain a.out binary support, as well as installing packages from earlier Red Hat Linux releases to provide the necessary libraries.
ScummVM 2.7.0, The Real Slim Shader, is officially out now bringing more compatibility for retro titles to modern platforms so here's what's new.
It turns out it was Knoppix 3.4 released in May 2004 that obsessed me as a child, providing me with some of my earliest steps into a larger world. Not only that, but the CD-R disc it was burned on still reads even after all of these years. Considering the volatility of such media, this surprised me.
Zero Wing along with other shoot 'em up classics Out Zone, Twin Cobra and Truxton from Toaplan and Bitwave Games have their brand new PC releases out.
Back when I first played through Quake: The Offering I found that I enjoyed the two mission packs even more than I did the original Quake campaign, and while these were the only official addons sold for Quake, several third party expansions and total conversions exist that also had retail releases. Two of these, Shrak and Malice, were published on CD-ROM in 1997 by Quantum Axcess.
ScummVM, the all-in-one solution for many different retro games and upgraded game engines for classics has a new version 2.7.0 ready for testing.
Anodyne from Analgesic Productions recently celebrated a 10th anniversary, and the community delivered in style with a full fan remake for modern platforms thanks to the previous source code release.
All your base are belong to us. Toaplan are having some absolute classics revived including Zero Wing, Out Zone, Twin Cobra and Truxton with a PC release and enhancements. Oh, and Native Linux support to ensure they're great on Steam Deck too.
One I've been meaning to point out for a while now is Zoom Platform. A games store that tries to appeal to "Generation X" with both new and classic games, DRM-free and they're continuing to build up their Linux support.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the 1991 classic from Nintendo has been reverse-engineered to bring it natively to more platforms.
Oh the nostalgia is heavy with this one! Gem Worlds is inspired directly by the likes of Boulder Dash and Supaplex.
If you look at the commercial Linux gaming catalogue at the turn of the millennium, in amongst all of the 3D shooters and strategic simulations being released, one glaring omission seems to have been the lack of any racing games. Loki Software never ported any to Linux, nor did any of the other porting houses. This left a void for the free gaming community to fill.
Another revamp of a classic is on the way with Atari once again teaming up with SneakyBox, as the 1981 title Caverns of Mars is releasing as Caverns of Mars: Recharged.
Some of my first real experiences of using Linux as a child came through the use of Knoppix, one of the first distributions to popularize the use of Live CDs. This allowed me to explore a wide swath of Linux applications. One of these was a role playing game which I recall I never got to work well, but lingered on in my imagination regardless.
While their foray into interactive storybooks did fail to impress, it did help remind me of BlackHoleSun Software, one of the earliest Indie developers to create games with Linux in mind. Their most famous game Bunnies was released as shareware in 2001, providing a demo version you could later update through use of a retail key. Thankfully, the story does not have to end there.
DOSBox Staging is a favourite of mine to follow that expands on the original DOSBox but with a focus on implementing new features and fixes. A new major update went out in December 2022 with some big additions.
Sold as interactive storybooks, these took the form of narrated picture books which went over the story from the film while allowing for a certain degree of user agency, typically by allowing a selection of quirky animations to play by clicking around with the mouse. UAV must have wanted in on this craze as well, and so Atlantis: The Underwater City - Interactive Storybook was born.
CatacombGL is an open source project to run Catacomb 3D (1991), The Catacomb Abyss (1992), The Catacomb Armageddon (1992) and The Catacomb Apocalypse (1993).
Given the the company's current focus, the name Hyperion Entertainment seems an odd fit for the modern maintainer of AmigaOS, betraying its earlier status as an Amiga focused video game porting house. One of their ports, that of SiN, to this day remains from them an elusive Linux exclusive.
Selaco, an upcoming GZDoom-based shooter from Altered Orbit Studios has been featured before and I'm bringing it back again here because of the huge upgrade to the demo. It's simply fantastic.
