ExtremeTech’s got an excellent round up of fantastic PC games that are available now, available for free, and run on just about any hardware. You don’t have to have a shiny Core i7 system in order to run these titles, many of which are old, much-loved games that have had their source code released for free. One perfect example? The Marathon Trilogy (box art shown above), widely regarded as one of the best first-person-shooters to ever hit the genre. Made by Bungie in their pre-Microsoft days, when they were game developing for the Mac exclusively. That doesn’t mean that your Marathon downloads are Mac-only; this puppy’s available for Windows AND Linux!
There are some other great games in the lineup as well, like a couple of notable strategy games like FreeCiv and Ikariam, as well as titles we all know and love like Puzzle Pirates. You can also pick up some adventure titles and side-scrollers like Fancy Pants Adventures and Cave Story.
But seriously – no one told me Marathon was free. What’s up with that?