For the love of the game

For many, the Open Source software movement is something stumbled across accidentally while trying to avoid buying Microsoft Office or find better ways of stealing music from the internet. But if you've got the time, the pipes and the disk space, you'll discover a rich variety of free gaming pleasures for you to explore.

Driven by a creative zeal that only true hobbyists know, much Open Source gaming is based around recreating older titles. As if by Darwinian mandate, only the truly classic games get remade, creating an open library of naturally-selected gems.

This, then, is a fascinating niche of game culture, where nerds fuelled only by love (and caffeinated beverages) re-draw pixels and rewrite code to create 'cover-versions' of classics