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Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Back in the day, PC gamers had two great shareware shoot-em-ups to choose from: Raptor and Tyrian. While many chose Raptor (whose full name is Raptor: Call of the Shadows), the clear winner in terms of care and quality is Tyrian. Oozing professionalism from every pore, Tyrian sports some excellent pixel art, music, and gameplay elements. It was also the launching pad for Alex Brandon, whose may be better known for his work on Unreal Tournament or Deus Ex. However, the original programmer, in a fit of generosity, decided to release the games as freeware, and the game engine as open source. Thus, new generations can be exposed to the genius shmup gameplay of Tyrian... for free!

Just a few years ago Microsoft was one of the most prolific first and third party publishers for PC games, releasing titles like the Age of Empires/Mythology series, the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, the Mechwarrior series, Freelancer, Impossible Creatures, Rise of Nations and many more. However Microsoft has been doing some cost cutting in the past 18 months as they have shut down a number of their internal PC developers such as ACES Studio and Ensemble Studios while cutting back their third party PC game publishing lineup.

At the same time, Microsoft has tried to work with third party publishers on their Games For Windows marketing push for PC games, They have also tried to improve their Games For Windows Live online service which got off to a rocky start just over two years ago but has made improvements since then. Big Download got a chance to chat with Michael Wolf, the Senior Marketing Manager for Games for Windows Live, to get an update on their PC game development and publishing plans and their future plans for Games For Windows Live.

We expected that the month of June would generate a ton of huge PC game stories thank to E3 2009 being held in the first week of the month. We had no idea that the biggest PC game story would actually happen near the end of June. Yet that's exactly what happened and today Big Download looks back at what we think were the top 10 biggest PC game stories in the past 30 days.

Yes, E3 2009 was in fact the source for many of the stories on June's list but as you will see it wasn't the only source; not by a long shot.

Click on the image to the right to read more of the top 10 Biggest PC game stories of June 2009.

Despite the fact that we live in the 21st century, fantasy as a genre is still with us, and shows no signs of going away any time soon. As an environment, it is so poorly defined that it can take the aesthetic of nearly anything, provided that certain tropes are in place: swords, archery, royalty, magic, assorted humanoid monsters with orcs being the mainstay, and the like. Temporally, there is a nebulous period of time during which all fantasy takes place, but you recognize it when you see it.

However, it's this vagueness that lends itself to abuse. Stylistically, there is little to cause any one fantasy-themed game to stand out from any other. And how many times can you get excited about playing the same character class over and over again? I'm in favor of any attempt to leave the stale fantasy genre behind and striking out into new territory, but how can we replace it, and with what?

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

The Might and Magic series has always been a popular one with the PC role-playing game fans. However, while the main series is certainly good, it is the Heroes sub-series that everyone remembers with such fondness. Randomized maps, economics mixed with fantasy warfare, and some excellent strategic options helped boost it over the Might and Magic series as a whole. While Heroes of Might and Magic V has been out for a while now, it's certainly not considered the best in the series. No, that honor is reserved for the one and only Heroes of Might and Magic II. So let's take a look at just why it is the best in a great series.

The mighty Ambrosia Software keeps churning out great games for the Mac, never resting on its laurels. However, there is one title in its roster that continues to iterate, and that's a genuinely good thing, because it keeps getting better with each pass. The Escape Velocity series, originating on the Mac for the now-Classic OS in 1996, has seen its third version drop in 2002, called EV Nova. It has only recently been made available as a Universal Binary, hence its inclusion here in Mac Monday. Even if it weren't for that, however, this game deserves to be brought to the attention of an audience who may not have had the pleasure of playing its earlier incarnations.

At its heart, EVN's gameplay hasn't notably changed from the first version. You take command of a low-level spacecraft, and attempt to rise to power by trading goods throughout the galaxy, indulging in some combat along the way. The graphics are still glorious 2D, which in this case is a welcome deviation from the typical trait seen in game series that run for a while -- the Ambrosia devs know not to mess with a winning strategy.

Point Lookout, the latest downloadable content expansion for Fallout 3, takes a short break from the retro sci-fi theme that defines the rest of the game. Instead, this new area centers on more of a B-movie horror theme. Players get to go to some secluded swamplands and unload using a double-barreled shotgun on its mutated, cannibalistic, locals while confronting a local cult. In the meantime, you end up in the middle of a long running feud, uncover a book of the occult, and brew up some moonshine.

Check out the Fallout 3 downloads

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

Joakim Sandberg, otherwise known as konjak, is perhaps better known for his sublime (and fantastic) Noitu Love series. But what about his other outings? Some, like Legend of Princess, are one-level affairs. Others, like Tripline, are engrossing but in a purely simplistic way, much like crosswords or Sudoku. He also has a bunch of short, on-off alphas and demos for players to jump into. However, his best freeware game is, without a doubt, the innovative and interesting shmup Chalk. With some interesting game mechanics and delightful visuals, it's a must have for any freeware fan.

Our Say2Play and Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 Giveaway contest concludes Sunday, so this is your last chance enter in for a chance to arm yourself with the power of voice using a rocking headset. With Say2Play, game tasks can be assigned to voice commands, so you don't have to memorize a long list of key commands to get straight into the game. We're giving 25 keys to celebrate the recently released new version. To go along with it, five grand prize winners will win a Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 headset, so they can game using quality hardware. Click on the link below or image above and leave a comment on the contest page to enter into the random drawing. Contest ends on June 28th.

Visit Say2Play and Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 Giveaway Contest Page
Download Say2Play trial version

Today's announcement of id Software's acquisition by ZeniMax Media (owner of Bethesda Softworks) took most people by surprise. Yet it's not the only time that a big independent game developer has been bought out by a publisher. Sometime the new relationship works out for both companies and sometimes it doesn't.

Big Download decided to look back at just some of the major acquisitions between PC game developers and publishers and see how they fared. Which ones bore fruit? Which ones failed to live to their potential? And which one resulted in the developer shutting down operations even after a successful run of major PC game hits?

Click on the image above to continue reading about the big PC game developer acquisitions.

There is a moment during the almost three hour-long Giant Bombcast: Game of the Year Edition when Jeff Gerstmann is expostulating on his choice of Grand Theft Auto 4 as his pick for GotY, where he describes a character that so closely resembled someone he knows -- and the associated memories of that person, and presumably the eventual fate of that person -- that he broke down a little and cried. "And games don't do that," he adds quietly.

It is the continuing viewpoint among those who don't play video games that games are not art. Among the reasons they cite for this stance, valid or not, is that a game could never make the player cry, because it lacks any sort of emotional depth. Obviously, this is an extremely facile argument, and can be attacked on a number of fronts, but let's examine it from the opposite angle. Can we envision a game that could make us, any of us, cry? What would it need to do to accomplish that?

Don't forget to enter into our Say2Play and Turtle Beach Ear Force 2 Giveaway contest. With Say2Play, game tasks can be assigned to voice commands, so you don't have to memorize a long list of key commands to get straight into the game. We're giving 25 keys to celebrate the recently released new version. To go along with it, five grand prize winners will win a Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 headset, so they can game using quality hardware. Visit the link below and leave a comment on the contest page to enter into the random drawing. Contest ends on June 28th.

Visit Say2Play and Turtle Beach Ear Force HPA2 Giveaway Contest Page
Download Say2Play trial version

Prototype starts with a loud, chaotic rampage through Manhattan, where the play uses a variety of shape-shifting powers to tear apart soldiers, tanks and citizen infected with a mutagenic virus. That short introduction perfectly encapsulates how the rest of the game plays out. Players run around the city, gruesomely tearing through anything that gets in the way, all the while collecting new abilities to cause more mayhem on a larger scale.

13 years ago today, id Software released Quake, the first game in a first person shooter franchise that continues to be one of the most well known in the PC gaming industry. With five full games based on the series, an number of official and unofficial expansion packs, tons of mods and total conversions and a currently running web browser online-only game, the Quake series continues to be popular even with major shift in emphasis.

On the day that the Quake series become a teenager, Big Download decided to look back at the entire game series. From it's start as a near-Doom clone to the Stroggos storyline to its multiplayer emphasis to its current incarnation as a free-to-play shooter, the series has had many different versions in a relatively short time span.

Click on the image to the right to continue reading Happy 13 Birthday Quake

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

If you are an avid PC gamer, chances are you have played the 2007 underwater epic BioShock. If you are an avid, ancient gamer, though, you probably have more fond memories of its spiritual predecessor, the incomparable and influential System Shock 2. Whether or not you are old enough to remember the first game makes no difference, as System Shock 2 stands on its own, explains all of the backstory you need, and innovates in ways that the FPS genre rarely saw. Its critical (although not commercial) success paved the way for other hybrid games like Deus Ex and the aforementioned BioShock. And while the graphics certainly haven't aged perfectly, the gameplay is as robust as ever, and serves to inspire games for generations to come.