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Support for all versions of Microsoft Entertainment Pack ended on January 31, 2003.

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Īll games being 16-bit run on modern 32-bit versions of Windows but not on 64-bit Windows. A 'Best of' disk of several of the games was also available at times as a mail-in premium from Kellogg's cereals. Games on the sampler included Jezzball, Rodent's Revenge, Tetris, and Skifree.

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įor 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. As payment, each author received ten shares of Microsoft stock. According to Microsoft FreeCell developer Jim Horne, the packs were not copy protected so customers could distribute copies to friends, to encourage using Windows for games.

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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. 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'. 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. It was developed by Saffire and published by Classified Games in North America and Cryo Interactive in Europe. A Game Boy Color version was released in June 2001 in North America and August 2001 in Europe. The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack is a collection of 13 games from previous Entertainment Packs. The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack

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.

Black Jack, a card game created by Mike Blaylock, based on the game of the same name

Chip's Challenge, written by Chuck Sommerville.

Life Genesis (based on Conway's Game of Life, with a two-player mode added ).

IdleWild (a screensaver program) – 8 new screen savers for this pack.

Pipe Dream (by LucasArts), written by Eric Geyser.

IdleWild (a screensaver program), written by Brad Christian.

Taipei (later known as Mahjong Titans and Microsoft Mahjong).

Pegged (a form of Peg solitaire), written by Mike Blaylock.

List of games Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1

1.5 The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection also includes versions of Tut's Tomb (as Pyramid) and TriPeaks. Mahjong Titans was replaced with Microsoft Mahjong in Windows 8. WinChess and Taipei, both written by David Norris, received remakes in Windows Vista, called Chess Titans and Mahjong Titans, respectively. Minesweeper from pack 1 was later bundled with Windows 3.1, and FreeCell was included in Windows 95. The marketing succeeded Computer Gaming World in 1992 described the series as 'the Gorillas of the Gaming Lite Jungle', with more than 500,000 copies sold.

The boxes had slogans like 'No more boring coffee breaks' and 'Only a few minutes between meetings? Get in a quick game of Klotski'. Microsoft advertised Entertainment Packs for casual gaming on office computers. A Game Boy Color version was released in 2000. In 1994, a compilation of the previous four Entertainment Packs were released called The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack. These games were somewhat unusual for the time, in that they would not run under MS-DOS. There were four Entertainment Packs released between 19. Microsoft Entertainment Pack, also known as Windows Entertainment Pack or simply WEP, is a collection of 16-bit casual computer games for Windows.