Microsoft Entertainment Pack - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The original Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

Entertainment Pack (WEP) is a collection of simply-designed 16-bit

16-bit

-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...

computer games for Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. These games were somewhat unusual for the time, in that they would not run under MS-DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

. Many of the games (still compatible with Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

) were later released in the Best of Windows Entertainment Pack

Best of Windows Entertainment Pack

The Best of Windows Entertainment Pack was a collection of thirteen 16-bit simple games sold separately from Windows. It was published in the Microsoft Home series of software. They were selected as the best games from the previously released Microsoft Entertainment Pack series...

. There were four Entertainment Packs in the original series. All games being 16-bit run on modern 32-bit versions of Windows but not on 64-bit Windows, except through a virtual machine.

List of games

Here is a complete list of the original Microsoft Windows Entertainment Pack titles:

Chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
Chip's Challenge
Chip's Challenge
Chip's Challenge is a tile-based, puzzle video game for several systems, including the hand-held Atari Lynx, Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, DOS, and Windows . It has also been ported to the TI-84+ calculator and the TI-89 Titanium...

^
Cruel
Cruel (solitaire)
Cruel is a solitaire card game played using a deck of 52 playing cards. Its arrangement and game play are almost like another solitaire card game Perseverance....

(a card game)
Dr. Black Jack
Dr. Black Jack
Dr. Black Jack is a computer game featured on the Windows Entertainment Pack. It is based on the popular card game Blackjack . The minimum bet is 10 points per deal.It was created by Mike Blaylock on 7 September 1992....

(a card game)^
FreeCell
FreeCell
FreeCell is a solitaire-based card game played with a 52-card standard deck. It is fundamentally different from most solitaire games in that nearly all deals can be solved...

(a card game)^ #
Fuji Golf
Fuji Golf
Fuji Golf is a golf sports game released with the Microsoft Entertainment Pack in 1991. It was programmed by Chiki Nagai while working at ANK Software Co. Ltd. The object of the game is to play the round in as few strokes as possible...
Go Figure!
Go Figure! (game)
Go Figure! is a math game released in 1992 as part of Microsoft's Windows Entertainment Pack. The object is to arrange four given numbers and operation symbols - addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division - to reach a given target number. Points are awarded for correct answers and deducted...
Golf
Golf (card game)
Golf is a card game where players try to earn the lowest number of points over the course of nine deals...

(a card game)^
IdleWild (a screensaver
Screensaver
A screensaver is a type of computer program initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT and plasma computer monitors by blanking the screen or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer is not in use...

program)
JezzBall
JezzBall
JezzBall is a video game in which red-and-white balls, referred to as atoms, bounce about a rectangular field of play, or room. The player advances to the next level by containing the atoms in progressively smaller spaces, until at least 75% of the area is blocked off...

^
Jigsawed (a Jigsaw puzzle)
Klotski
Klotski
Klotski is a sliding block puzzle. Sometimes it only refers to the block arrangement in the right-hand-side diagram, where the largest block must be moved to the bottom middle location...
Life Genesis
Life Genesis
LifeGenesis was part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack. Based on Conway's Game of Life, it allowed players to design opening states and watch their progression, but it also allowed for play against the computer. In this version, the computer's cells were shown in red and the player's in blue...

(based on the Life simulation
Conway's Game of Life
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970....

by John Horton Conway)
Maxwell's Maniac
Maxwell's Maniac
Maxwell's Maniac is a computer game originally part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack series. Loosely based on the concept of Maxwell's demon, the object is to separate red and blue molecules into their respective color-coded chambers, using a sliding door...
Minesweeper
Minesweeper (Windows)
Windows Minesweeper is a variant of the computer game Minesweeper, created by Curt Johnson, originally for OS/2, and ported to Microsoft Windows by Robert Donner, both Microsoft employees at the time...

#
Pegged (a form of Peg solitaire
Peg solitaire
Peg solitaire is a board game for one player involving movement of pegs on a board with holes. Some sets use marbles in a board with indentations. The game is known simply as Solitaire in the United Kingdom where the card games are called Patience...

)
Pipe Dream
Pipe Dream (video game)
Pipe Mania is a puzzle game developed in 1989 by The Assembly Line for the Amiga. It was ported to several other platforms by LucasFilm Games, who gave it the name Pipe Dream and acted as general distributors for the US...

(by LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...

)^
Rattler Race
Rattler Race
Rattler Race is a puzzle video game, created in 1991 by Christopher Lee Fraley, based largely on the 1970s game simply called Snake. It was distributed with the Microsoft Entertainment Pack, which was included with early Microsoft Windows systems. The player takes on the role of a hungry snake, who...
Rodent's Revenge
Rodent's Revenge
Rodent's Revenge is a puzzle video game, created in 1991 by Christopher Lee Fraley. It was distributed as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack. The player takes on the role of a mouse, with the objective being to trap cats by pushing blocks around, whilst avoiding obstacles.- Levels :To win a...

^
SkiFree
SkiFree
SkiFree is a computer game created by Chris Pirih, who was working as a programmer at Microsoft at the time.The object of the game is simple: to ski down an endless slope and avoid the obstacles.-History:...

^
Stones
Stones (game)
Stones is a game developed by Michael C. Miller and released in 1991 as part of Microsoft's Windows Entertainment Pack 2. Its object is to place 90 tiles, or "stones", on a board. A tile can only be placed if it shares two of three attributes - color, shape, or the like - with every adjacent tile....
Taipei^
Tetravex
TetraVex
TetraVex is a puzzle computer game, available for Windows and Linux systems.- Gameplay :TetraVex is an edge-matching puzzle. The player is presented with a grid and nine square tiles, each with a number on each edge. The objective of the game is to place the tiles in the grid in the proper...

^
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...

(Windows version)^
Tic Tac Drop (a form of Connect Four
Connect Four
Connect Four is a two-player game in which the players first choose a color and then take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid...

with quadrilateral, triangular and plus-shaped boards and customizable win pattern and number of rows and columns)
TicTactics (a Tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...

variant)
TriPeaks
Tri Peaks
Tri Peaks is a solitaire card game that is akin to the solitaire games Golf and Black Hole. The game uses one deck and the object is to clear three peaks made up of cards....

(a card game)^
Tut's Tomb (a card game)^
WordZap (a word game)
- ^ Included in Best of Windows Entertainment Pack
  Best of Windows Entertainment Pack
  The Best of Windows Entertainment Pack was a collection of thirteen 16-bit simple games sold separately from Windows. It was published in the Microsoft Home series of software. They were selected as the best games from the previously released Microsoft Entertainment Pack series...
- # Bundled in some later versions of Windows

GameSampler

For much of the early 1990s, the Gamesampler, a subset of the Entertainment Pack called small enough to fit on a single high-density disk, was shipped as a free eleventh disk added to a ten-pack of Verbatim

Verbatim Corporation

Verbatim Americas, LLC is a US company that markets storage media and flash memory products. It is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation of Japan and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.-History:...

blank 3.5" microfloppy diskettes. Games on the sampler included Jezzball, Rodent's Revenge, Tetris, and Skifree. A "Best of" disk of several of the games was also available at times as a mail-in premium from Kellogg's cereals.

32-bit versions

In the copies of Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...

and Windows 2000

Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...

source code which leaked back in 2004, there are 32-bit versions of Cruel, Golf, Pegged, Reversi, Snake (Rattler Race), Taipei and TicTactics. However, Freecell

FreeCell

FreeCell is a solitaire-based card game played with a 52-card standard deck. It is fundamentally different from most solitaire games in that nearly all deals can be solved...

and Minesweeper

Minesweeper (Windows)

Windows Minesweeper is a variant of the computer game Minesweeper, created by Curt Johnson, originally for OS/2, and ported to Microsoft Windows by Robert Donner, both Microsoft employees at the time...

have had official 32-bit versions bundled even with early versions of Windows NT

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

. The original game developers of some of the games such as SkiFree , TriPeaks , WordZap now offer 32-bit versions. Third party developers have also created 32-bit freeware clones of Klotski , TetraVex Rodent's Revenge , JezzBall , and Tetris.

Port to the Game Boy Color

A multicart

Multicart

In video game parlance, a multicart is a cartridge that contains more than one game. Typically, the separate games are available individually for purchase or were previously available individually . For this reason, collections, anthologies, and compilations are considered multicarts...

containing seven games was released for the Game Boy Color

Game Boy Color

The is Nintendo's successor to the 8-bit Game Boy handheld game console, and was released on October 21, 1998 in Japan, November 19, 1998 in North America, November 23, 1998 in Europe and November 27, 1998 in the United Kingdom. It features a color screen and is slightly thicker and taller than...

as simply Microsoft Entertainment Pack. Four of the games on the multi-cart were ported from Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack, while the remaining three were ported from other Microsoft Entertainment Pack compilations.

Games found on the GBC Microsoft Entertainment Pack mult-cart:

Tut's Tomb
TriPeaks
FreeCell
TicTactics^*
Minesweeper^*
Life Genesis^*
SkiFree

^*Not included in the original Best of Windows Entertainment Pack.

List of games

GameSampler

32-bit versions

Port to the Game Boy Color

See also