Ok, so I start up SMI in ScummVM, and everytime I do, some message comes up saying "wait! before you begin, lets have a quick history quiz. press enter to begin...." so I click it and then some random pirate guy comes up and it asks me when he was hanged in... say, nebraska. I obviously have no idea, so I just type in a random date. This happens 3 times in a row, and then after I get all 3 wrong, the window closes itself. What is going on!!!

That's strange - that's the copy-protection that you had to go through with the original version of the game. I thought most versions of the game in circulation today came from the CD, which as far as I know had the copy-protection removed (because presumably it's cheaper to lose a few copies of a sixteen year old game than it is to bundle that damn codewheel with every copy.)

Either way, I was certain that ScummVM skips the copy-protection anyway, because none of us can be bothered to go up to the attic to get our codewheels.

Odd. Someone else here might be able to help you though. Or try contacting the ScummVM people... or installing a new version of ScummVM?

Actually, ScummVM doesn't skip the code wheel bit as much as reveal it. The CD versions of the game, instead of removing the copy protection, simply had bits of code in to bypass that particular part of the beginning which ScummVM didn't recognize, so instead ScummVM found it (as well as the copy protection on MI2).

Oddly though, with the CD version, all you had to do was put in any random number and you'd be fine, but your saying it tells you it's wrong, which leads me to believe that you're using the original floppy version of the game, in which case I'd say it'd be a good idea to try and get a hold of the code wheel somehow.