''Microsoft Entertainment Pack'' , also known as ''Windows Entertainment Pack'' or simply ''WEP'' , is a collection of

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two mos ...

casual computer games for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. There were four Entertainment Packs released between 1990 and 1992. These games were somewhat unusual for the time, in that they would not run under

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

. In 1994, a compilation of the previous four ''Entertainment Packs'' were released called ''The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack''. A

Game Boy Color The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...

version was released in 2000. Microsoft advertised Entertainment Packs for casual gaming on office computers. The boxes had slogans like "No more boring coffee breaks" and "Only a few minutes between meetings? Get in a quick game of Klotski". The marketing succeeded; ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' in 1992 described the series as "the Gorillas of the Gaming Lite Jungle", with more than 500,000 copies sold. '' Minesweeper'' from pack 1 was later bundled with

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

, and FreeCell was included in

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

. ''WinChess'' and ''Taipei'', both written by David Norris, received remakes in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, called ''

Chess Titans ''Chess Titans'' is a chess video game with 3D graphics developed by Oberon Games and included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 Home Premium, Business/Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. It is a fully animated, photorealistic interactive chess ...

'' and ''Mahjong Titans'', respectively. ''Mahjong Titans'' was replaced with ''

Microsoft Mahjong ''Microsoft Mahjong'' (formerly ''Mahjong Titans'', ''Shanghai Solitaire'' and ''Taipei'') is a computer game version of mahjong solitaire published by Microsoft. The version titled ''Mahjong Titans'' was developed by Oberon Games and included i ...

'' in

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

. ''

Microsoft Solitaire Collection ''Microsoft Solitaire Collection'' is a video game developed by Smoking Gun Interactive, Microsoft Casual Games and Arkadium and published by Microsoft Studios for Microsoft Windows. It combines the Solitaire, FreeCell and Spider Solitaire titles ...

'' also includes versions of ''Tut's Tomb'' (as ''Pyramid'') and ''TriPeaks''.

List of games

''Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1''

* ''

Cruel Cruelty is the pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept. Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve vi ...

'' (a card game) * ''

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

'' (a card game) * '' Minesweeper'', written by David Bauer * ''Pegged'' (a form of Peg solitaire), written by Mike Blaylock * ''

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

'' (later known as Mahjong Titans and Microsoft Mahjong) * '' Tetris'' (Windows version) * ''TicTactics'' (a

Tic-tac-toe Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. T ...

variant) * ''IdleWild'' (a screensaver program), written by Brad Christian

''Microsoft Entertainment Pack 2''

* '' FreeCell'' (a card game) * ''Jigsawed'' (a Jigsaw puzzle) * ''

Pipe Dream Pipe dream may refer to: Music * ''Pipe Dream'' (John Williamson album), 1997, or the titular song * ''Pipedream'' (Alan Hull album), 1973 * ''Pipe Dreams'' (Murray Head album), 1995 * "Pipe Dreams" (Nelly Furtado song), 2016 * ''Pipe Dream ...

'' (by LucasArts), written by Eric Geyser * ''

Rattler Race ''Microsoft Entertainment Pack'' , also known as ''Windows Entertainment Pack'' or simply ''WEP'' , is a collection of 16-bit casual computer games for Windows. There were four Entertainment Packs released between 1990 and 1992. These games w ...

'' * ''

Rodent's Revenge ''Rodent's Revenge'' is a puzzle video game created by Christopher Lee Fraley and distributed as part of '' Microsoft Entertainment Pack 2'' in 1991.About window of Rodent's Revenge, Christoper Lee Fraley, 1991 The player takes on the role of a ...

'' * ''

Stones In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth's o ...

'', developed by Michael C. Miller * ''

Tut's Tomb Pyramid is a patience or solitaire game of the Simple Addition family, where the object is to get all the cards from the pyramid to the foundation. The object of the game is to remove pairs of cards that add up to a total of 13, the equivalent ...

'' (a card game) * ''IdleWild'' (a screensaver program) – 8 new screen savers for this pack

''Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3''

* ''Fuji Golf'' (a golf game) * '' Klotski'' * ''Life Genesis'' (based on '' Conway's Game of Life'', with a two-player mode added) * ''

SkiFree ''SkiFree'' is a single-player skiing computer game created by Chris Pirih and released with '' Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3'' for Windows 3.0 in October 1991. The player controls a skier on a mountain slope, avoiding obstacles while racing a ...

'', written by Chris Pirih * ''

TetraVex An edge-matching puzzle is a type of tiling puzzle involving tiling an area with (typically regular) polygons whose edges are distinguished with colours or patterns, in such a way that the edges of adjacent tiles match. Edge-matching puzzles are k ...

'' * '' TriPeaks'' (a card game) * ''

WordZap ''WordZap'' is a puzzle video game designed by Michael F.C. Crick, son of scientist Francis Crick. In 1991, it was included with Volume 3 of the ''Microsoft Entertainment Pack'' and was later released by Jaleco for the Game Boy in 1992. An updated ...

'' (a word game) * ''IdleWild'' (a screensaver program) – 8 new screen savers for this pack

''Microsoft Entertainment Pack 4''

* ''Chess'' * ''

Chip's Challenge ''Chip's Challenge'' is a top-down tile-based puzzle video game originally published in 1989 by Epyx as a launch title for the Atari Lynx. It was later ported to several other systems and was included in the Windows 3.1 bundle '' Microsoft Enter ...

'', written by Chuck Sommerville * ''Dr. Black Jack'', a card game created by Mike Blaylock, based on the game of the same name * ''Go Figure!'' * ''

JezzBall ''JezzBall'' is a video game originally published for Microsoft Windows in 1992. The player must capture parts of a rectangular space by dividing it with horizontal or vertical lines. While each line is being drawn it must not be touched by bouncin ...

'' * ''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

''The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack''

''The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack'' is a collection of 13 games from previous ''Entertainment Packs''. A

version was released in June 2001 in North America and August 2001 in Europe. It was developed by Saffire and published by Classified Games in North America and

Cryo Interactive Cryo Interactive Entertainment was a French video game development and publishing company founded in 1990, but existing unofficially since 1989 as a developer group under the name Cryo. History Cryo was formed by members of ERE Informatique ...

in Europe. Windows *''Tetris'' *''FreeCell'' *''Pipe Dream'' *''Chip's Challenge'' *''Taipei'' *''Tut's Tomb'' *''Rodent's Revenge'' *''TriPeaks'' *''Golf'' *''SkiFree'' *''JezzBall'' *''Dr. Black Jack'' *''TetraVex'' Game Boy Color *''Tut's Tomb'' *''TriPeaks'' *''FreeCell'' *''TicTactics'' *''Minesweeper'' *''Life Genesis'' *''SkiFree''

Development

Microsoft Entertainment Pack was designed by the company's “Entry Business” team, whose job was to make Windows more appealing to homes and small businesses. Ex-Microsoft product manager Bruce Ryan said the company did this because it "was concerned that the operating system’s high hardware requirements meant that people would only see it as a tool for large enterprises". The project had "almost no budget", and no major video game publishers got involved because they doubted Windows' legitimacy as a gaming platform; therefore Ryan compiled a series of games that Windows employees had been working on in their spare time. According to

Microsoft FreeCell FreeCell, also known as Microsoft FreeCell, is a computer game included in Microsoft Windows, based on a card game with the same name. Development Paul Alfille implemented Freecell in 1978 for the PLATO computer system at CERL; by the early ...

developer Jim Horne, the packs were not copy protected so customers could distribute copies to friends, to encourage using Windows for games. As payment, each author received ten shares of Microsoft stock. 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 The Kellogg Company, doing business as Kellogg's, is an American multinational food manufacturing company headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. Kellogg's produces cereal and convenience foods, including crackers and toaste ...

cereals. All games being 16-bit run on modern 32-bit versions of Windows but not on 64-bit Windows. Support for all versions of Microsoft Entertainment Pack ended on January 31, 2003. In the copies of

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...

and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

which

leaked A leak is a way (usually an opening) for fluid to escape a container or fluid-containing system, such as a tank or a ship's hull, through which the contents of the container can escape or outside matter can enter the container. Leaks are usuall ...

in 2004, there are 32-bit versions of ''Cruel'', ''Golf'', ''Pegged'', ''Reversi'', ''Snake'' (''Rattler Race''), ''Taipei'' and ''TicTactics''. However, FreeCell and '' Minesweeper'' have had official 32-bit versions bundled even with early versions of

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

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

Reception

Digital Trends noted, "For many, the simple but enjoyable games found in the Entertainment Pack provided a first taste of early PC gaming and served as a gateway to more complex classics." '' PC World'' described the pack as having "standout time-wasters".

Notes

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1990 video games 1991 video games 1992 video games Casual games

Ent Ents are a species of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees; their leader is Treebeard of Fangorn forest. Their name is derived from an Old English word for giant. The Ents appear in ''The Lord of ...

Game Boy Color games Microsoft franchises Microsoft game compilations Puzzle video games Video games developed in the United States Windows games