Games

From Retro Windows wiki

Minesweeper[edit]

The classic minesweeper that has been present since Windows 98. It (like the other games) features a new icon to fit in with the whole aesthetic. There are three main difficulties, Beginner, with a 9x9 field and 10 mines, Intermediate, with a 16x16 field and 40 mines, and Expert, with a 16x30 field and 99 mines.

The game also allows you to set a custom amount of mines in a custom field by choosing the Custom difficulty.

Solitaire[edit]

Solitaire has been around since Windows 3.0 starting from 1990, featuring the card game known as Klondike. The game itself features different difficulty settings,changing the Draw sequence from 3 cards to 1 and also changing the type of scoring from Standard to Vegas.

Pinball[edit]

The pinball game is a game that has been bundled with Windows since the Microsoft Plus! bundle for Windows 95 and was included in the default installation of Windows ME and onward. The official name is 3D Space Cadet and is just one level of a bigger pinball game called Full Tilt! Pinball published by Maxis. The game was included in Windows as a part of a deal.

3D Space Cadet is a pinball game revolving around sci-fi space. When hitting the mission bumpers, the player is assigned a mission and completing these missions grants the player many points. The overall objective is to rack up points, like any arcade game.

The controls for this game (on a qwerty keyboard) are, Space to launch the ball, Z and / to use the paddles, X and . to tilt the board (which if done repetitively causes the game to ignore user input until the ball is lost).

The game contains a cheat that allows the player to control the ball with the mouse and incur an instant 1,000,000 score when hitting the B key. The cheat is activated by typing 'hidden test' (space included).

Hearts[edit]

Hearts was first included in Windows with Windows for Workgroups 3.1, Microsoft's first "network-ready"[2] version of Windows, released in 1992,[3][4] which included a new networking technology that Microsoft called NetDDE. Microsoft used Hearts to showcase the new NetDDE technology by enabling multiple players to play simultaneously across a computer network.[5] This legacy could be seen in the original title bar name for the program, "The Microsoft Hearts Network" (although network play was removed in the Windows XP version).

Hearts continued to be included in subsequent versions of Windows, but was absent in all Windows NT-based OSes prior to Windows XP including Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. From the 'Help' menu, Hearts offered a quote from Shakespeare's famous play, Julius Caesar (act III, scene ii): "I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts...". Later versions of Windows starting with Vista removed this quote.

Hearts is not included with Windows 8, 10 or 11. As part of the operating system, it is deleted upon upgrading to Windows 10 from an earlier version.

On The Microsoft Hearts Network for Windows for Workgroups 3.1, the default opponent names are Anna, Lynda, and Terri. In later versions, the three default opponent names, Pauline, Michele, and Ben, were specified by the program's developer. One is the spouse of a Microsoft employee who found a program bug, one was a Microsoft employee who resigned in 1995, and one is an employee's child who frequented the Microsoft worksite.[6] The names are not used in the Windows Vista version of the game, instead favoring the three cardinal directions that the computer players pertain to depending on their side of the window ("West", "North", and "East"). This version of the game no longer prompts for a player name to be entered at startup, and instead uses the name of the currently logged-in user account as the player name.

Freecell[edit]

Today, there are FreeCell implementations for nearly every modern operating system as it is one of the few games pre-installed with every copy of Windows. Prior to Windows Vista, the versions for Windows were limited in their player assistance features, such as retraction of moves. The Windows Vista FreeCell implementation contains basic hints and unlimited move retraction (via the Undo menu choice or command),[7] and the option to restart the game. Some features have been removed, such as the flashing screen to warn the player of one move remaining. FreeCell is not included in the Windows 8 operating system but is available in the Windows Store as the free Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which is also bundled with Windows 10.

Internet Games[edit]

  • The servers closed down in 2019