I'm Robin Monks, and this is Don't Forget to FOSS the Weekly podcast about free and open source software, technology and community.

This week I've been harkening back to my youth.

Back to my first computer.

It was a budget model i486 with a turbo button.

It ran MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

I have no idea why we had the Workgroups version when I was growing up.

It was a slower era of computing though.

I have a distinct memory as a child of crying when the window screensaver came on.

'cause I had never seen a screensaver before.

I wouldn't have actual internet access for a few more years.

So every program I ran was purchased in stores, often in bargain bins.

or traded between friends.

One of my favorite games was a poorly labeled floppy of Sim City.

People had copied it repeatedly, and the copy I ended up with had dozens of other people's cities on there, it was a high enough value program that it quickly got copied onto the meager hard drive for frequent access.

now.

It's been many, many years since then, but I'm fairly sure the version I had was the SimCity 2.0 release that included sound blaster support.

City simulation games have always stayed close to my heart, and I was excited when I learned that the original SimCity code was released as open source to accompany the one laptop per child project back in 2007.

At the time I went looking for a running executable and couldn't find one and then forget about it.

Well, it's 18 years later, so it's time to revisit.

The open source version has been renamed to micropolis, which was the working title for Sim City to avoid using the EA trademark.

Ironically, micropolis is also trademarked, but the owners of that trademark were nice enough to let the open source game still use it.

The original micropolis Source code hasn't been touched for about 11 years at this point, although there's been a fork.

That's just the core version that's been updated much more recently.

That said, it seems the original c plus plus Fork of micropolis ended up in much the same state as the one laptop per child hardware project, but the work itself lives on micropolis is available ported to Java Unity, a Windows NT build that someone made that would run on Windows nt.

And there's also an in-browser HTML five version that works surprisingly well.

I lost a couple hours playing the browser version before making today's show.

If you happen to have old versions of SIM City, you can use another open source program to run them DOSBox and it's more active Fork DOSBox-X DOSBox will happily emulate a DOS environment to run floppy images of old games like Sim City.

DOSBox will even happily let you install Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 to get the Fuller retro experience.

And DOSBox itself is fully open source.

If you're on Mac.

You also have the second option in the form of 86 Box and Mac Box, both of which do an amazing job at emulating different types of X 86 hardware and letting you configure exactly what you want in an X 86 machine.

Both of these are also open source.

And very actively developed.

When I was recording this, the latest version of 86 Box was released three hours ago.

for me.

It's a little nicer to work with Mac Box on Apple Silicon than DOSBox X although both emulated Sim City perfectly, you can really go deep into the nostalgia.

I've set up many games I remember from my childhood this way, including games like Dangerous Dave, Dr.

Riptide, the original Microsoft Entertainment Pack, and Microsoft Puzzle Pack, as well as a host of others.

Of course, SimCity isn't the only game to see an open source release make it continue to be playable decades after its launch.

it is somewhat unique in that the license holder release the original source code.

Though a lot of revival projects end up being community led efforts to recreate the original engine OpenTTD is one of the classic examples.

Recreating Transport Tycoon Deluxe and continuing to be an active development.

OpenTTD lets you use either the original game assets from Transport Tycoon, deluxe if you happen to have a copy.

Or you can use fully open and free assets instead, OpenTTD provides builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux and links to that are in the show notes.

OpenRCT2 It's also the well done, actively maintained reimplementation of the classic Rollercoaster Tycoon two.

Like OpenTTD builds are provided for Linux, windows, Mac, and in this case also for Android.

However, unlike OpenTTD, there aren't open assets available.

You must be able to provide a copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon two or Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic to be able to play the game.

The experience of playing OpenRCT2, though is shockingly great.

Everything is well optimized and the game played as I remember.

I also lost a lot of time playing this, but I think it was worth it.

This, of course, only scratches the surface of what open source reimplementation of popular games exist.

If there's a game you enjoyed playing in the nineties or two thousands, there's a decent chance if someone is out there trying to make an open source version or potentially already has made one, you have OpenRSC for Runscape Classic, Vanilla Conquer for Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert and many, many more.

There's definitely more than I know of too, so please reply and let me know what open source re releases of games you've been enjoying playing.

If you have comments or suggestions, lots of options for reaching me are at rpm.sh.

The music for the show is by Bohdan Kuzmin, don't forget the FOSS is released under the creative comments Attribution share alike 4.0 International license.

See you next week.