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Allegro 4 and Allegro 5 are cross-platform, libraries mainly aimed at video game and multimedia programming. They handle common, low-level tasks such as creating windows, accepting user input, loading data, drawing images, playing sounds, etc. and generally abstracting away the underlying platform. However, Allegro is not a game engine: you are free to design and structure your program as you like.

According to the Oxford Companion to Music, Allegro is the Italian for «quick, lively, bright». It is also a recursive acronym which stands for «Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines». Allegro was started by Shawn Hargreaves in the mid-90's but has since received contributions from hundreds of people over the net.

Allegro 5 is the latest major revision of the library, designed to take advantage of modern hardware (e.g. hardware acceleration using 3D cards) and operating systems. Although it is not backwards compatible with earlier versions, it still occupies the same niche and retains a familiar style.

Allegro supports the following platforms:

Unix/Linux
Windows (MSVC, MinGW)
MacOS X
iPhone

Allegro 5.1 also adds support for:

Android