Can you play graphics games in a linux terminal /console without x windows?
 

when you start linux - not x windows - and you get the black console / terminal , what i want to know is can you play graphics games in this terminal like in msdos.
for example could i play pacman or a opengl game like galacta in the terminal console, without x windows.

My question is also, if not why not? what is the technical reason why not if you cant?

You could if the game was written that way. SDL supports displaying graphics directly to the console framebuffer, and MPlayer can play videos in the framebuffer as well.

But if you were logged into a machine over SSH, or using a serial terminal, it wouldn't work. You need to have a framebuffer to draw to.

Technically, as someone else already said, sdl has the means to draw to a framebuffer device, so, provided that the game uses sdl, is not programmed depending on x and you have fb working on your console, then it should work.

The problems is that, in the real world, not much people program for sdl+fb for console.

That's for plain fb. About opengl, my guess is that there's no easy way to do it. You could implement an opengl layer that worked over fb, that's not a problem (i don't know if there's any) but it would be pointless, because intrinsecally and by definition, a framebuffer driver can't have 3d acceleration at all. So, you would be rendering opengl without any hardware support (other than your cpu). It might be doable for basic purposes only...