Category: Retro

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun has released on Steam and it works out of the box on Steam Deck and desktop Linux thanks to Proton 8.

While Super Indie Karts already had Native Linux support, it's nice to see another developer making improvements for Steam Deck too.

Hellgineers takes the idea of Bridge Constructor and gives it a devilish spin, available now with Native Linux support.

Do you love the classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Clearly a lot of people do, and the PC port Ship of Harkinian just recently had a great sounding upgrade.

Marble Blast was first released in 2002, before being updated to Marble Blast Gold in 2003. The demo can be obnoxious, with it showing a begging screen imploring you to buy the full game after completing each and every level. Considering the state of the registered version as it exists now, this can feel more than a bit galling.

Japanese developer Odencat just released Meg's Monster, a cute looking short JRPG with a rather interesting twist.

I have mentioned before how I was unable to get Dave Taylor's original port of Doom to work as it was built as an outdated a.out binary rather than ELF. Since then, I stumbled on an article by Jason Heiss that describes how to load the binfmt_aout kernel module to attain a.out binary support, as well as installing packages from earlier Red Hat Linux releases to provide the necessary libraries.

ScummVM 2.7.0, The Real Slim Shader, is officially out now bringing more compatibility for retro titles to modern platforms so here's what's new.

It turns out it was Knoppix 3.4 released in May 2004 that obsessed me as a child, providing me with some of my earliest steps into a larger world. Not only that, but the CD-R disc it was burned on still reads even after all of these years. Considering the volatility of such media, this surprised me.

Zero Wing along with other shoot 'em up classics Out Zone, Twin Cobra and Truxton from Toaplan and Bitwave Games have their brand new PC releases out.

Back when I first played through Quake: The Offering I found that I enjoyed the two mission packs even more than I did the original Quake campaign, and while these were the only official addons sold for Quake, several third party expansions and total conversions exist that also had retail releases. Two of these, Shrak and Malice, were published on CD-ROM in 1997 by Quantum Axcess. 

ScummVM, the all-in-one solution for many different retro games and upgraded game engines for classics has a new version 2.7.0 ready for testing.

Anodyne from Analgesic Productions recently celebrated a 10th anniversary, and the community delivered in style with a full fan remake for modern platforms thanks to the previous source code release.

All your base are belong to us. Toaplan are having some absolute classics revived including Zero Wing, Out Zone, Twin Cobra and Truxton with a PC release and enhancements. Oh, and Native Linux support to ensure they're great on Steam Deck too.

One I've been meaning to point out for a while now is Zoom Platform. A games store that tries to appeal to "Generation X" with both new and classic games, DRM-free and they're continuing to build up their Linux support.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the 1991 classic from Nintendo has been reverse-engineered to bring it natively to more platforms.

Oh the nostalgia is heavy with this one! Gem Worlds is inspired directly by the likes of Boulder Dash and Supaplex.

If you look at the commercial Linux gaming catalogue at the turn of the millennium, in amongst all of the 3D shooters and strategic simulations being released, one glaring omission seems to have been the lack of any racing games. Loki Software never ported any to Linux, nor did any of the other porting houses. This left a void for the free gaming community to fill.

Another revamp of a classic is on the way with Atari once again teaming up with SneakyBox, as the 1981 title Caverns of Mars is releasing as Caverns of Mars: Recharged.

Some of my first real experiences of using Linux as a child came through the use of Knoppix, one of the first distributions to popularize the use of Live CDs. This allowed me to explore a wide swath of Linux applications. One of these was a role playing game which I recall I never got to work well, but lingered on in my imagination regardless.