Microsoft Entertainment Pack

Microsoft Entertainment Pack
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Distributor(s)	Microsoft
Designer(s)	Robert Andrews
Series	Entertainment Pack
Platform(s)	Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows XP
Release date(s)	1989
Mode(s)	Single-player

Chip's Challenge

The original Windows Entertainment Pack (WEP) is a collection of simply-designed 16-bit computer games for Windows. These games were somewhat unusual for the time, in that they would not run under MS-DOS. Many of the games (still compatible with Windows XP) were later released in the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack. 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.

FreeCell, Minesweeper, Taipei and Chess from this pack were later bundled with Windows.

List of games

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

Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1

• Cruel (a card game)
• Golf (a card game)^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Minesweeper, written by Rob Donner^{[lower-alpha 2]}
• Pegged (a form of Peg solitaire)
• Taipei (later known as Mahjon Titans and Microsoft Mahjong)^{[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2]}
• Tetris (Windows version)^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• TicTactics (a Tic-tac-toe variant)
• IdleWild (a screensaver program), written by Brad Christian

Microsoft Entertainment Pack 2

• FreeCell (a card game)^{[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2]}
• Jigsawed (a Jigsaw puzzle)
• Pipe Dream (by LucasArts), written by Eric Geyser^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Rattler Race
• Rodent's Revenge^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Stones
• Tut's Tomb (a card game)^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• IdleWild (a screensaver program) - 8 new screen savers for this pack

Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3

• Fuji Golf
• Klotski
• Life Genesis (based on the Life simulation by John Horton Conway)
• SkiFree, written by Chris Pirih^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Tetravex^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• TriPeaks (a card game)^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• WordZap (a word game)
• IdleWild (a screensaver program) - 8 new screen savers for this pack

Microsoft Entertainment Pack 4

• Chess (later known as Chess Titans)^{[lower-alpha 2]}
• Chip's Challenge, written by Chuck Sommerville^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Dr. Black Jack (a card game)^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Go Figure!
• JezzBall^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Maxwell's Maniac
• Tic Tac Drop (a form of Connect Four with quadrilateral, triangular and plus-shaped boards and customizable win pattern and number of rows and columns)

GameSampler

For much of the early 1990s, the Gamesampler, a subset of the Entertainment Pack small enough to fit on a single high-density disk, was shipped as a free eleventh disk added to a ten-pack of Verbatim 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 and Windows 2000 source code which leaked back in 2004, there are 32-bit versions of Cruel, Golf, Pegged, Reversi, Snake (Rattler Race), Taipei and TicTactics.^[1] However, FreeCell and Minesweeper have had official 32-bit versions bundled even with early versions of Windows NT. The original game developers of some of the games such as SkiFree,^[2] TriPeaks,^[3] WordZap^[4] now offer 32-bit versions. Third party developers have also created 32-bit freeware clones of Klotski,^[5] TetraVex^[6] Rodent's Revenge,^[7] JezzBall,^[8] and Tetris.^[9]

Port to the Game Boy Color

A multicart containing seven games was released for the Game Boy Color as The Best Of 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.

Notes

See also

• Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection – a later 32-bit collection for Windows 95
• Microsoft Arcade
• Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack

References

External links

• Microsoft Entertainment Pack at MobyGames