After some consideration, we’ve decided to start fresh with our forums. The old forums were never what we wanted them to be, so it is with little regret that we have wiped the slate clean, and moved in a new community. Everyone’s accounts are still good, though, so we welcome anyone who has drifted away to come check out the new crowd and join in.

Things are going to get more interesting from here on out, and we’re all very glad to have the new gang on board. Click the “forums” icon at the top of the page to come check us out.

When Microsoft announced Live Everywhere at last year’s E3, it seemed like a great idea. It was a way to integrate PC, Xbox, and even cell phone gaming so that they supported each other. MS seemed to be showing a lot of determination to strengthen PC gaming with recognizable branding, standardized controllers, and some of the added perks of Live like achievements.

But at GDC MS announced that they intended to marry Live for Windows and Xbox Live subscriptions as a single pay service. This means that to play a Live-enabled PC game, you’ll need to fork over the usual $7.99 a month for the privilege, a privilege that has been free since the beginning of time on PC.

It’s not completely clear if these titles will require Live for online play, or merely offer added benefits to subscribers, but if the former is the case, Microsoft has lost their minds. It becomes not only a question of whether or not consumers will pay, but what the incentive is for developers.

On Xbox, Live is the only game in town. Developers support it because they have to. On the PC, this isn’t the case. Developers can tell MS where to stick their Live. And at what point does a developer say “Hey, you know what would be awesome? If Microsoft got to charge our customers money to play out game! Wouldn’t that be great?” It’s not going to go down like that.

If MS had real insight to the PC gaming market, they’d look at Valve and see how a service like Steam could be married with the features of Live to create a free environment that’s profitable and attractive to everyone. Trying to rape PC gamers out of money because they can force them to pay on a console isn’t going to help strengthen PC gaming, it’ll either be a miserable flop, or a bullet in PC gaming’s head.

The best things in life are free. Sure you need your 40 hour epics, too, but those home grown morsels of gaming can be almost as entertaining. Here’s some of what I’ve been playing this week.

Pixel, the one-man team behind the amazing platform adventure Cave Story released his followup project this week. This one isn’t nearly so ambitious. It’s a low-res grayscale shooter in the Gameboy tradition called Guxt. It’s pretty old school, with no bombs, cheesy shooterpop soundtrack, and gameplay that will make you miss your NES. It’s not the masterpiece that Cave Story was, but it’s good to see Pixel at it again.

You can check out Guxt at Pixel’s site.

Clones and remakes have long been a staple of homebrew gaming, but it’s rare when a remake genuinely adds something to the original formula. There have been a lot of clones of Tempest and Tempest 2000 over the years, but Typhoon 2001 is by far the most faithful and the most fun. It doesn’t really innovate, but it does add a new look that’s clean, polished, and really captures the spirit of Jeff Minter’s Jaguar classic. It could still use some balancing, but the author is still refinining the game. If you’ve never had a chance to play T2K, or just don’t have the Jag around anymore, it’s really not a bad approximation at all. Check it out at the official site.

But my favorite freeware find of the week is a simple little arcade-style game called rhacp. I have no idea what that name means, but it’s an original take on the old “snake game” theme. The goal is to ram the little tadpole creatures with the front of your snake, which will cause it to get longer and longer. You’ll have to avoid your tail as per convention, and you’ll also have to avoid stars that you drop behind. Collecting all the dots on screen will cause the start to convert to dots. From there it becomes a game of survival. The perspective is a bit dizzying, but it couldn’t be more addictive. I’ve played this stupid game for hours this week. Check it out here.

If anyone enjoyed these and wants to see more freeware selections, leave me a comment, and I’ll try to make it a weekly thing.