Interview with Aaron Giles, DREAMM Emulator author: "I have Battle for Naboo up and running with some glitches."
Playing some classic Star Wars games on modern hardware has always been a struggle. From Star Wars Trilogy Arcade to Rogue Squadron II and III, it's often been down to digging into how the games run on certain emulators, like Dolphin and Supermodel. So imagine my surprise when another emulator managed to run the PC version of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace on my Mac with no issues, after years of struggling.
DREAMM, developed by Aaron Giles, is an emulator that runs most of the library from LucasArts, Lucasfilm, and LucasLearning companies. First released in July 2022 as a way of running SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) games like Day of the Tentacle, The Secret of Monkey Island, and others, DREAMM has expanded to cover even more games.
But it's version 4.0, released in March, that's made a big impression. Six late-90s Star Wars games are now playable via DREAMM, which include Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Rogue Squadron, and X-Wing Alliance. Since the emulator is also available on macOS and Linux, these games can now be played on your Mac or Steam Deck without issues.
The PC version of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace (TPM) features better graphics and exclusive cheat codes compared to the PS1 version I grew up with, but I always had issues playing the game on both a PC and a Mac. However, when it came to DREAMM, I merely dragged and dropped an ISO file of the game into the emulator, and within five minutes, I was playing it.
To mark DREAMM 4.0's release, I spoke to Giles about how it came to be, what the major update means to him, and whether we'll be seeing more games featured in the emulator soon.
