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Plenty! My ideas for the PC: If you like real-time strategy, Warlords Battlecry 2 can be had for $10 and is a fun game -- fairly Warcraft-ish. For more original RTS, the Kohan series of games are VERY inexpensive and some of the best and most inventive RTS I've played in the past 5 years. The original Max Payne is a blast and quite cheap, as is Tribes 2 (excellent multiplayer, $10 game, if you can find unmodded servers to start out on anymore), and the Baldur's Gate / Icewind Dale series are all inexpensive now and fun tactical RPGs (BG = more story, ID = more combat).
As for the GBA, I'd recommend ANY of the Super Mario Advance titles. There's an INCREDIBLE game out called Ninja Five-O, which combines the best elements of the old Shinobi and Bionic Commando games into one BLAST of a 2-D arcade beat-em-up. That one's on eBay for $10-15, and is also called "Ninja Cop" sometimes (maybe they re=released it?). Anyway, it's excellent. Speaking of Bionic Commando, they made a sequel for Game Boy Color that was fantastic, light-years ahead of the original, or any other GBC game at the time. That will probably be cheaper finding it used.

The one game that I've stumbled upon lately is Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. While not set in the world of aziroth its the type of game war3 should have been now. Not high on the graphic glitz but definately a great game to play. Heh the music kind of reminds me of the war2. Everything else is more or less a nice evolution of the war2 genre with a slightly different world. Download the demo from loki or from the kohan site itself. P.S. I'm not affiliated with either of the companies. I'm just someone who got his warcraft 3 fix from a different source early.

Here is my list:

1. Freeciv - the open source flavor of the epic strategy game. I purchased Civ3 when it came out, but TBHWY, it doesn't provide a compelling reason to reboot into Win-doze, and I still opt to play freeciv. Freeciv is much more customizable and plays quicker, allows multitasking, and was set up specifically for mulitplayer (even if I haven't ventured online to play much MP). I hope the freeciv team is entertaining notions of a Civ3 ruleset, or some variation ...
2. Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - innovative, evolutionary RTS (real time strategy) game - instead of the "Age of Buildings", clickety-click nature of other RTS games in the genre, Kohan is the wargamer's RTS, with company-based battle, zone of supply, and zone of population constructs, and as opposed to the micromanagement of resource collection, resources are earned/spent on a per minute basis, and constructed companies have a maintenance cost. Plus you have magic wielding units that gain XP and cast some cool spells. Multiplayer with Windows gamers is possible (though with large maps you won't be able to view films after)
3. Pysol - the vastly superior Linux alternative to solitaire
4. Sid Meier Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack - great game, but I have a big beef with the multiplayer support - you can only MP against other Linux users, unlike Kohan. So it gets downgraded to the bottom of the list for that reason.

For those of us who aren't into anime (FF 10) or first-person shooters... ;)

Kohan: Ahriman's Gift , the most original and entertaining RTS this year.

Wizardry 8 , if you like party-based, heavy-combat, first-person RPGs.

Stronghold , a terrific "castle simulator" built by some of the folks who created the Caesar/Pharoah series.

Kohan is a RTS that advances the genre in the "strategy" department. How so?

• Instead of creating units, you commission companys - and not only is there a one time cost to commission, but there is an upkeep cost (measured in stone, wood, iron, mana).
• Implementation of zones - your units will heal and resupply if in the zone of supply. Combat occurs when overlapping zone of control occurs. Companys gain XP and get stronger and there is a morale gauge that will go down if they are continuously marched and fought without rest.
• Only resource stockpiled is gold - all of the others are net amounts gained/loss on a per minute basis. Building a woodmill will give you +6 wood per minute. So being plus in a given resource is kind of a waste while being negative will bite into your gold income (each resource has a cost in gold).
• It has a wonderful Linux port and you can do multiplayer against others with the Windows version. I have both OS versions, and the Linux versions runs as well, if not better (i.e., no CD crack required, just run with -c switch).
• All of these features turn the game into much less of a click-fest and the inane "Age of Buildings" like AoE/AoK would turn into. Terrain matters not only on defense but movement and sight also.
• Multiplayer is a blast - 4v4 runs smooth, and being able to tribute towns as well as units makes it much more of a "team game" - one person in the back goes Economy while the others gear up for all-out military assault. Even without the full tilt to military or economy, you're always faced with the military/economy balance. If you forego economy, you get the military edge early but if you can't cripple your opponent, his economy later will translate into more military might.
• Fantasy setting where you can have heroes (the Immortal Sovereigns are encapsulated in amulet form and for 50 gold are "awakened") - the heros are like a wildcard in the deck, but there are other magical units - clerics blessing and healing, magicians casting fireballs, wizards casting lightning spells, archers shooting magic arrows, summoned creatures, etc. ... the combinatinos for forming companies are endless, as is the potential for strategy variations.

Yes, I'm a fanboy for Kohan - I encourage all to check it out, that is, if you've ever enjoyed Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Warcraft, etc. ... I had been burned out on the RTS genre until I played this game.

As a beta tester of both of the Kohan games I can say that the developers tried VERY hard to make the game a game of strategy. Instead of controlling single units, you control companies, complete with a leader and support units. Various table-top and turn based strategies a transfered over to the real time engine, including Zones of Control (ZOC), Zones of Population (ZOP), and numerous other concepts.

More than once I've won a battle by having a superior strategy. Flanking becomes particularly useful because the support and ranged units end up being behind the front line melee units.

I strongly reccomend it (although as noted above, I'm biased), and it's even available for Linux!

Official Kohan web site: http://www.kohan.net


Download page with Linux and Windows versions:
http://www.kohan.net/kis/downloads/demo.htm

As a beta tester of both of the Kohan games I can say that the developers tried VERY hard to make the game a game of strategy. Instead of controlling single units, you control companies, complete with a leader and support units. Various table-top and turn based strategies a transfered over to the real time engine, including Zones of Control (ZOC), Zones of Population (ZOP), and numerous other concepts.

More than once I've won a battle by having a superior strategy. Flanking becomes particularly useful because the support and ranged units end up being behind the front line melee units.

I strongly reccomend it (although as noted above, I'm biased), and it's even available for Linux!

Official Kohan web site: http://www.kohan.net


Download page with Linux and Windows versions:
http://www.kohan.net/kis/downloads/demo.htm

Kohan fills the bill nicely here, and there's even a Linux version. The concept of supply is taken into account. Your troops only heal within a certain radius of your cities. If a city is under attack (siege), your nearby troops are no longer "supplied".

Additionally, there's a huge variety of decisions to be made how to organize your troop elements. What kind of main unit to use? What supporting unit types?

The map also limits how close together cities can be, so you really can't stockpile up in an arms race like you can in most games.

There's more to this, but I'm not an expert at it yet... ;)

Yeah, but Warcraft III is a directx game. It may have some compatibility problems with wine. I'll wait until Warcraft III is released and see if someone can get it to run on wine. If so, I'll buy it, if not, there'll always be a native linux port of an RTS game called Kohan.

Kohan -- which /. pimped last week -- is a fantastic RTS game, and I'm told that one only needs 1 CD for a LAN game. (It may be 1 CD for 2 or 3 people, not sure. Check the message boards at the above link.)

WC2 was a fun RTS, but it was truly a clickfest. Kohan (and for that matter, Total Annihilation) were both much more robust games. But neither really became SimBase games; either would make an excellent LAN party game.

Too bad, they just released the new Demo of Kohan. And it looks nice! Very nice! For more information go here. But, I guess they might pull of a chapter 11. But it wont be the same company after that. Maybe many things will have to go ... Many things as in free things ...

There's a broken link on their site. Try this:

http://www.kohan.net/main/press/linux_demo.htm

This looks like my kind of game!

Zooko