Without doubt Linux is a great operating system which provides great security, brilliant performance, innovative desktop environments, a great community and through the vast array of distributions repositories teeming with applications.

There are some brilliant applications for available for Linux in almost every category from the excellent LibreOffice, to the incredible GIMP, Openshot, Clementine, VLC and Evolution.

Think of a category and there is a great application ready and waiting for you. Well...... almost.

Gaming for a long time was the Achilles heel of Linux with at best amateurish home brew games. In the past there have been some good games written natively for Linux but the trouble is that some people have confused the Tux logo with being a good character for a game in the same way that Mario is overused by Nintendo.

Supertux is just about ok as a Super Mario clone and there is no doubt that SuperTuxKart is actually a fairly decent racing game in the Mario Kart mould. Why oh why though did something think it was a good idea to come up with Defendguin? 

Other than writing about Linux, my other main passion in life is retrogaming. I possess a collection of systems which include the Atari 2600, Sinclair Spectrum 48k and +2, a Megadrive, SNES, MasterSystem, a Sega Mega CD system, a Sony Playstation 1, a Dreamcast, a Gamegear, Gameboy Advance and Commodore Amiga 600.

My favourite games like my favourite music and my favourite films are from the 1980s.

For the Atari there was Ms Pacman, Junglehunt, Dig Dug, Kangaroo and Frogger, for the Spectrum there was Manic Miner, Grand Prix Simulator, BMX Simulator, Chuckie Egg, Auf Wiedersehen Monty and to be honest too many more to mention.

On the Megadrive I liked to play Street Fighter, Streets of Rage, Mortal Kombat, Road Rash and the brilliantly bizarre Nighttrap with Kimberley from Diff'rent Strokes. Bubble Bobble, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer and Speedball were great on the Amiga.

The point is that when it comes to gaming, specifically retrogaming I know my stuff. Therefore I can safely say that somebody trying to turn the classic "Defender" into "Defendguin" is completely bonkers. It is truly dreadful.

I have trawled the repositories of Ubuntu and Mint looking for good clones of the retro classics such as Pac Man, Dig Dug, Asteroids, Breakout and Manic Miner. To be honest there isn't really anything that even remotely passes as a good clone. 

If you search for "PACMAN Game Linux" within Google you will come across a link to NJam on SourceForge and the text which accompanies it says "The most addictive free PACMAN game". I will tell you now that the competition isn't hard to beat.

The best alternative appears to be "Pacman" written in 1995 by Roar Thomas.  It is clunky at best and the controls are horrific. NJam itself is based fairly loosely on the original Pacman but it isn't Pacman or anything close to it.

Dig Dug doesn't appear to exist as a clone anywhere and there aren't even any good Manic Miner or Chuckie Egg style games. I did come across XScavenger which looks a bit like Loderunner and it is at least playable.

Open Invaders is based on Space Invaders. Remember that Space Invaders was built to run on hardware significantly worse than the laptop that I am writing this article on. Open Invaders is slow and the graphics are poor. The graphics remind me of those shops that have a stretched logo which were obviously created to be one size and rather than recreate the logo for their shop banner they have stretched it to go across the shop front and it just looks bad. I am thinking of places that over use the Z or K such as EAZZZY BEDS or KOOL KUTS.

Bat and ball Breakout style games aren't much better. Collision detection on a bat and ball game is about the easiest thing to get right but most of the bat and ball games have managed to get it so wrong. The best example of a Breakout clone is probably lbreakout.

The screenshot above is from a game called "Critical Mass". Critical Mass is an old school shoot 'em up. It isn't the worst game of this type by any means within the repositories but the mouse movements are jerky and it doesn't play well for more than 5 minutes.

What is scary is that Android has been around a fraction of the time of Linux yet there are thousands of brilliant games, clones and good old fashioned coin op conversions. Why has it taken so long for Linux to catch up?

Rest assured though, Linux has started to catch up and on the next page I will show you where to go to get the best Linux games.