Inside Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1

By greg shultz February 27, 2011, 11:29 AM PST

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Image: NVIDIA

ntIn 1990, Microsoft released set of games designed exclusively for Windows 3.0 called the Microsoft Entertainment Pack. (I could not track down the exact date of release) By exclusively, I mean that these games would only run in Windows and would not run in MS-DOS.

ntIn this gallery, I’ll take you back to the Windows 3.0 days and look over the games and screen savers that came in the first Microsoft Entertainment Pack.

Image: NVIDIA

ntWhen it was first released, the Microsoft Entertainment Pack was not conceived of as being the first in a series and so was not actually known by the number 1. In fact the Microsoft Entertainment Pack box cover, shown on the left, was designed to closely match the Windows 3.0 box cover. As you can see, the big selling point for this package was a Windows version of the very popular Tetris game.

ntOnce Microsoft recognized the popularity of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack, a second version was conceived and the original was repackaged as Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1, as you can see from the box cover on the right.

ntAs I mentioned, the main selling point of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack was a Windows version of Tetris, which was a wildly popular in the mid to late 1980s after being created by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union.

ntThroughout the game, random pieces fall from the top of the playing area. Using the arrow keys you rotate and move the pieces in order to form a solid row of blocks across the playing area. When you do, that row vanishes.

ntTetris could be played by one or two players.

ntAs you probably know, Windows 3.0 came with the Solitaire card game and it quickly became very popular, so it makes sense that the Microsoft Entertainment Pack would come with a follow-up solitaire card game. In fact it came with two.

ntIn the Cruel version of solitaire, the playing area is divided into three regions: four suit stacks located at the top of the playing area, twelve stacks of cards below, and the Deal button located in the upper-right corner of the playing area. The object of Cruel is to move all the cards from the lower stacks up to the suit stacks at the top. While you rarely saw the back of the cards in Cruel, you could change the card back.

ntIn the Golf version of solitaire, the playing area is divided into three main regions: the seven stacks of cards at the top of the playing area, the deck in the bottom-left corner of the playing area, and the discard pile located to the right of the deck. The object of the game is to play all the cards from the top stacks down to the discard pile.

ntIn this game, you could always see the back of the cards and you could change the card back.

ntIdleWild is a screen saver application that came with Entertainment Pack. At the time, this was a very cool addition as Windows 3.0 did not come with any built-in screen savers. There were eight screensavers in the package.

ntThe Dancing Lines screen saver was probably the coolest one of them all and it went on to become one of the native Windows Screen savers under a new name—Mystify.

ntThe Shuffle screen saver was also very cool because rather than blanking the screen and displaying some animated design, it took a screen shot of whatever was on the screen, divided it into blocks, and then shuffled those blocks around the screen.

ntPegged is a game of logic and is played by jumping a peg, either horizontally or vertically, over and adjacent peg and placing it in an open space on the other side. The peg that was jumped is removed from the board. The goal of the game is to space your jumps such that there is only one peg remaining on the board at the end of the game.

ntWhile the board remains the same, there are several variations of the game that place different numbers of pegs in different patterns.

ntTicTactics is a variation on the traditional game of tic-tac-toe. The object of TicTactics is to be the first player to line up three or four playing pieces in a row, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. You play against the computer, which usually wins.

ntTaipei is a single player version of the ancient oriental game, Mah-Jongg. The object of the game is to remove a pair of matching tiles in each turn until all tiles are removed. There are seven different tile layout patterns to choose from.

ntMinesweeper became so popular that Microsoft soon made it a standard game in the Windows operating system. It replaced Reversi.

ntAs you know, Minesweeper is a game of strategy and luck in which you attempt to locate all of the mines in the minefield. You click on a square and if it contains a mine, all the mines are revealed and the game is over, if the square does not contain a mine, the adjacent squares disappear and reveal numbers that indicate the number of mines in the surrounding eight squares.

By greg shultz

My first computer was a Kaypro 16 \"luggable\" running MS-DOS 2.11 which I obtained while studying computer science in 1986. After two years, I discovered that I had a knack for writing documentation and shifted my focus over to technical writing.

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