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| Microsoft Entertainment Pack | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
| Publisher(s) | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Designer(s) | Robert Andrews |
| Series | Entertainment Pack |
| Platform(s) | Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows XP |
| Release | 1989 |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
The original Windows Entertainment Pack (WEP) is a collection of 16-bit casual 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 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. Support for all versions of Microsoft Entertainment Pack ended on January 31, 2003.
FreeCell, Minesweeper, Taipei and WinChess from this pack were later bundled with Windows. The original chess game was WinChess and with Taipei was written by David Norris; in later versions of Windows this was superseded by Chess Titans.
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 has "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.
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 in 1992 described the series as "the Gorillas of the Gaming Lite Jungle", with more than 500,000 copies sold.
The original Microsoft Windows Entertainment Pack titles include:
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.
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