ScummVM adds support for Ultima VIII, plus details of Ultima IV and VI

[Andytizer 269]

ScummVM has announced that Ultima VIII is now completeable under the daily development build of ScummVM. The compatibility is based on the open source engine Pentagram. This gives us another way to play the classic game on PC (or Android, or Ouya, or Dingux or any other platform ScummVM supports!)

Ultima VIII has been playable on modern PCs for quite some time using DOSBox, which is prepackaged in the GOG.com and Origin versions of the game. 

One of the previous entries Ultima IV became compatible with ScummVM when xu4 became a subengine of ScummVM in April 11, 2020. Similarly Ultima VI gained compatibility with ScummVM when Nuvie became a subengine of ScummVM on April 12, 2020, however:

Quote

Due to some miscommunication, Nuvie may still advance as a separate project, but given the work done integrating Nuvie into ScummVM, we're hoping to have it officially supported in ScummVM as well. As with Ultima IV, Ultima VI supports the original game mode, as well as an enhanced mode that allows for Nuvie's full screen map, container gumps as in Ultima VII, and other features. Note that enhanced mode defaults to double resolution, so for now, the intro only displays in half of the screen.

It would be interesting to see what players think of the new ScummVM compatibiltiy and whether it offers significant advantages compared to the widely used DOSBox versions, please comment if you've tried them both!