http://youdontknowjack.com

Your daily DisOrDat question from "You Don't Know Jack", that epic quiz video game.

N.

Awesome ninja jump n' run game.

Vantage Master Online

A downloaded, fun strategy game where you, a Master, summon Natials to fight against the opposing Master and his Natials. Has a single player mode with killer difficulty, and online play for going head to head with other guys.

Thanks to FencerShinryuu for reminding me of the name and providing a link so I didn't have to Google it.

Update to Cave Story: the Gameflaws site has moved to http://www.miraigamer.net/cavestory/

New game for the list: Nethack. A bastardly hard turn-based randomly generated dungeon crawler; the inspiration for Diablo, and the successor to Hack (which itself follows from the big daddy of them all, Rogue). Twenty years old and still undergoing active development.

http://www.nethack.org/ -- the main site. Downloads for Linux, UNIX, Windows, OSX and Mac Classic, among other things, as well as source code. Available (for most platforms) in both top-down tty (ASCII art) and top-down tile graphics flavours.
http://slashem.sourceforge.net/ -- SLASH'EM, Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic, is a Nethack variant that adds more stuff - more areas, more classes, more races, more items, more enemies, more objectives, more abilities, more spells, and more difficulty.
http://www.darkarts.co.za/projects/vultures/ -- Vulture's Eye and Vulture's Claw, high-quality isometric-graphics versions of Nethack (Eye) and SLASH'EM (Claw) with full mouse support. Linux and Windows binaries, source code might build under OSX.

For those who don't like to learn-by-dying:
http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~eva/n...oilerlist.html -- the Nethack Spoiler List. Item and enemy stats; spell effects; how to identify items; how prayer and sacrifice work; how to teach your pet to steal, and how to tame new pets; and much, much more. Most of this applies to SLASH'EM as well, and some of it is SLASH'EM specific. Note that since nethack is randomly generated, much of this is in the form of general techniques - for example, it can't tell you where the Oracle is, but how to recognize it when you find it; it can't tell you what a blue potion does, but how to find out for yourself - without meeting an untimely end if it happens to be Sickness or Paralysis.

I know it's not any single game, but a good go-to site for legal abandonware is www.abandonia.com. It's a good site to find most anything worth playing (and some that sadly isn't), with the added bonus of not distributing ESA-listed games they have listed and directing you to the parent companies of games you can still buy. They also point you toward several programs that you can use to run non-XP compatible DOS games.

www.addictinggames.com

All of your needs. =D

T R E M U L O U S is the only game that I really waste my time with these days. It's a standalone FPS+RTS combination (think Savage, but without the "commander" aspect) based on a modified Q3 engine. It's a very standard aliens vs. human marines setting, but both teams are radically different, and having a good builder can make or break your team.

The learning curve can be steep, but it's worth checking out if your the type that enjoys a well-thought out FPS.

Also, it's only officially supported for Linux and Windows, though an unnofficial Mac version can be found, provided you're diligent enough to get to it.

http://www.agdinteractive.com The remakes of King's Quest 1 and 2 can be downloaded here, along with a special parody game. These are Adventure or Puzzle games similar to Monkey Island or Deja Vu or various other titles. These remakes have a point and click interface and enhanced graphics like the later games in the series.

I'm going to throw in a suggestion of my own here. Meritous. It's an odd combination of Zelda style dungeon crawler and bullet hell shmup. You attack with a circular wave which not only hurts enemies but nullifies bullets too, which is essential since enemies from the beginning shoot tons of bullets at you. The wave is chargeable, but the longer you charge it for the longer you're without it. Your character can be upgraded to have a shield, stronger wave and shorter charging/cooldown time. It's a challenging game.

channel 4 games

zylom

These two good sites (that I don't believe have been listed yet) have a ton of games on them. Oh, and did anyone say armorgames?