Games On Linux

The topic at this month's TLUG meeting was games on Linux. It was a introductory talk so it covered a lot ground, from simple pickup games to the commercial 3D first person shooters that are available for Linux. For the retro game enthusiast there are emulators like MAME which enable one to play classic arcade and console games, and open source interpreters for the text adventure games like Zork. The console and arcade games are copied from the ROMs and are not modified at all, so for example, the arcade games still require coins to be inserted, which is simulated with a key press.

The talk didn't cover any open source games that I have not played. This might be because the good games are quite well known and bound to be popular. The presenter enjoys Battle for Wesnoth and gave a good demonstration. He obviously plays it a lot, because he had all the keyboard short cuts memorized. After the talk, someone suggested asking each person in the audience which games they played. I mentioned BZFlag since that was the most recent one I've played, but I've also played Wesnoth, Crossfire, Extreme Tux Racer (formerly Tux Racer), and others depending on my mood.

There are lot of games available for Linux and only the truly hard core gamer would have difficulty finding something interesting. The Linux Game Tome is a good place to start.