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The Great Operating System Games
harrymcc writes "For decades, the simple little games that come with operating systems have been some of the most-used software on the planet. Legendary geeks such as Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Andy Herzfeld have tried their hands at writing them. And yet they get no respect — or, actually, attention of any kind. Technologizer's Benj Edwards aimed to rectify that with a look at forty years' worth of bundled OS games, from 1971 Unix text-based ones to Woz's Little Brick Out to such Windows mainstays as Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Reversi." Article is an annoyingly long slide show (would it kill people to put a reasonable amount of content on pages?) but there's some fun stuff in there.
Anyone remember Hover!, a game that came on the Windows 95 disk? Good times, good times.
Living With a Nerd
What about Hunt the Wumpus, I always liked it.
Along with the classin Linux game Xbill (named after you know who)
Ah, good old solitaire. That last time I remember playing that game it was on a 386 running Windows 3.1. People still seem to love it though. 2 weeks ago I was browsing around in a pawn shop and someone was looking at a laptop computer running Vista. Was that a problem for him? Nope, but for whatever reason they couldn't find Solitaire (don't know if the link was missing or it had been removed - or if they just couldn't find it - I wasn't looking, just overheard the conversation). The customer was all sorts of pissed. "When you buy a computer it ought to AT LEAST come with Solitaire. What kind of stuff are ya'll selling in here?". Just struck me as funny. Guess he didn't know that on any Windows system even if it has been removed it can be added right back in - or that if you REALLY got desperate Solitaire is one of the most commonly available cloned games out there.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The first one I encountered was startrek on an HP 2000 system in the mid 1970s
To test our patience... Too many pages...
Does game inclusion say something fundamental about the nature of each operating system?
Yep. The only reason to upgrade to Vista and Win7 is the game graphics..
Pinball was great.. It worked perfectly on my 25MHz 486SX
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I used to stay in from Recess to play ski-free. Never did make it past that abominable snowman....
IIRC solitaire was included with windows to help people who hadnt used a computer before get used to the process of dragging & dropping and using the mouse in general.
There were so many fun little things tied into this game. Cool tricks for points. Setting trees on fire. Knocking over people. And of course, the surprise monster ending!
The Windows game "Where the hell is my file?", or wait, was that a game?
Why is this slideshow-fest in Apple? Seemed most of the slides were non-Apple.
I used to have this weird text adventure for my old 386. I think it was for Windows 3.1. It'd be all black with these words on it, it was some sort of scary cyberpunk hacking game where you had to investigate files and navigate a directory structure. There was a strange cheat left in it though (was it a beta?): if you simply instructed your character to 'win' (by running WIN.EXE), you'd win right there and then, the game would exit and take you back to Windows!
Weird, huh?
It came with Windows 2000. The physics were very realistic and the sounds were spot on.
I burnt *many* hours playing Snipes on our school's Novell network.
is this article serious? Theres only 2 situations where you play those games. 1. your on a work machine offline and bored out of your mind with no work to do. 2. your a sad loser who thinks solitaire is hours of entertainment. And I think Bill Gates gets enough recognition too...
When I first got Red Hat I spent many hours playing 'make-sound-work-in-KDE' :)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that it was an influence in the epic RPG, Progress Quest. As I sat, transfixed by that progress bar, I felt like I was doing something worthwhile for my machine. Now I don't run MS any more, I kind of miss those fun times of defragging, not to mention the periodic reinstalls of everything.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Bundled with FreeBSD still. Just a few weeks ago I played that until 1 in the morning...from the console -- xterm ruins the immersion into the underground world.
OK, it's not an OS, but Excel had a flight simulator hidden inside it. Getting into it was a pain, but popping it up on someone else's computer was as much fun as the game itself.
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
Probably not installed by default on most OSes, but it should be! First thing I install on a new machine myself.
I (as student) once argued with our university IT staff that this was essential software for any self-respecting computer science lab, and they agreed and installed it on all machines. :)
One CS student VS 893 DOS games: Let's play oldies
Simple games presented to us while the OS is booting. Kinda like in Tekken (1), where you could play a quick game of Galaga while proper game data are loaded from the CD.
Something that simple (again, Galaga-like; or, for example, clearing one screen of Frozen Bubble-like game; using as basic GFX/toolkit/etc. as possible) shouldn't burden currently available machines too much. You can either play along for dozen or so seconds it currently takes to, basically, stare at a loading screen...or ignore it, no harm done (hm, or OTOH have an option to continue, clearing few more screens ;p ). Could be fun on mobile phones, too, many recent ones have not exactly instant booting... (and I can certainly imagine Google giving such option in Android; they had Pacman in mainsite logo already)
One that hath name thou can not otter
My dad bought us a Tandy TL2 when I was a kid and it came with an assortment of Sierra Online games (Conquests of Camelot: The Search For The Grail, Hero's Quest: So you want to be a Hero?, Thexder, Bubble Bobble and maybe one or two others). Changed my life, literally. I played video games when I was young but those made me a 'Gamer.' Recently bought a complete 'Hero's Quest: So you want to be a Hero?' in the original box with all the inserts (Prodigy, etc). Such awesome games.
was the first game I ever played on computer.
DEC-20 mainframe with a teletype as output.
It too a full minute to reprint the board after each move. With 60 moves per game it took a while to finish a game...
1979 it was.
I still have a soft spot for reversi. Found a fun clone on a Japanese game site a while back which I play when I feel the need for a bit of distraction.
Trying to associate Microsoft with "fun" is like trying to associate Satan with aromatherapy. -Tycho
Anyone know why exactly "Buddy Holly" was put on the disk? Seems like kind of a random video to toss on there.
Later reborn as Virus on the 16bit machines, Zarch on the Acorn Archimedes was a fantastic demo of what the hardware could do. And, for its time, the 32bit RISC-based Arch could do a lot.
Cheers,
Ian
In the grand poo bagh of things I have to admit it, when stuck in some dusty garage!
(I'm trying for some karma back...lol)
I always enjoyed a quick round of Global Thermonuclear War. IIRC that was included with the WOPR/OS.
Novell Netware counts as an OS, right? Where's Snipes? It outranks half this list easily.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
The game that is responsible for consuming the most hours of my life on a Windows box, is Chips Challenge (MS Entertainment Pack). 150 puzzle levels, nerd saves geeky princess-mad-scientist storyline. I'm nearly willing to have Windows again just to play it.
Reply to That ||
> "[W]ould it kill people to put a reasonable amount of content on pages?"
Yes, the twin demons of page views and banner ad impression counts would indeed kill people. Many non-tech news sites offer a "Single page" or "View all" or "Print" option, but tech-oriented sites generally don't, with a few exceptions like Wired or C|Net.
The content and descriptions were certainly not worth the 21 pages of ads I had to step through.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Which was included on tape with Apple ][+ computers (might have even been included with the Apple ][ as well).
When you're stuck with a console, the bsdgames package helps a lot to pass the time. There's a great version of Tetris, ports of the classic games Hunt the Wumpus, Adventure, and Trek, and some assorted puzzle games. My favorite is Boggle. Great way to spend 3 minutes while something downloads/compiles/whatever.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Whatever happened to the network version of Hearts that used to be included with Windows?
Anyone who thinks that these games have gotten no attention has never seen the hilarious trailer for Minesweeper: The Movie.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I see you haven't played the "PulseAudio" edition. It's like Dance, Dance Revolution, but without any dancing or music but with a lot more swearing.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I prefer bdsmgames, but those are much more difficult to apt-get install...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I spent many many ..... hours back in 1997 tilting that fucking game. Ah good times, good times.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I've always heard how the availability of games for the Mac has always been a weak spot. Now I see what they've been talking about...
All the Unix systems I used back in the 90s had this great multiplayer shooter with graphics like asteroids. Spent huge amounts of time on that baby. One guy at work did awsomely well until we realised he'd compiled a custom binary with hotkeys for powerups.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I will not go through 21 pages of slideshows. I refuse to view 21 page reloads to see this list. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. (21 Nos.)
How about those games that came with QBASIC?
You know. GORILLA.BAS
I used to visit my friends to play that game... my computer only had GWBASIC.
How many high-risk operations can you do before you lose?
You lose when:
*you have to reboot
*your computer is no longer under your control
*you are unable to do any of the tasks that Windows claims to be able to do without rebooting or losing control of your computer
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The game you're talking about was licensed from a 3rd party, and Microsoft got a bad build of it. Maxis, the software's author, released the same game as one board of several available in a package called "Full Tilt! Pinball" in 1996.
I experienced it first through the "Full Tilt!" product, and was sorely disappointed by the version included in Windows. My biggest gripe was the plunger - in the Windows build the power of the ball release wasn't proportional to the distance the plunger appeared to be pulled back. Yes, that's a petty complaint, but little details like that stand out when you've played the finished product then get handed a copy of the beta release. There are other problems, too; I think Maxis made improvements to the physics engine after licensing it to Microsoft.
If you like the version you got free from Bill Gates, then do yourself a favor and find a copy of the full release. Three boards instead of just one, with fewer bugs. You'll be glad you did.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
If they are including games in Windows Vista and Windows 7, they should include games in major Mobile OSes.
My BlackBerry came with a Brick Breaker game. Though really I could file this one under "games I love to hate", as this game is to Arkanoid what Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing is to OutRun. Indeed the game is so deplorable and of such atrocious functionality I can't help but wonder if someone from slashdot was loaned to help with its development...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Novell DOS (DR-DOS) came with a multiplayer first person 3D space combat game (wireframe) called NetWars. It was great fun and pretty impressive for a game bundled with a text-based OS.
Alongside Little Brick Out Woz provided the 2 paddle/player game Bloody Murder.
"This game simulate real life."
"The object is to kill your opponent."
And then two stick men ran back and forth the top and bottom edges of the screen throwing knives when the button was pressed.
If one got hit, you'd hear a tinny "AAAARGH!" from the speaker, the man would fall and red blood streamed out.
It played 1 player also with the computer doing something like playing back. Badly, but not shabby at all for pure BASIC.
Readability often works well for condensing slide shows like this to a single page: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
I think that's the name. It was the rollercoaster game for mac os 8 or 9. I remember finding it on the computers in junior high.
The old x86-based B series workstations we had at Unisys featured this particularly well done shooter. The B workstations only had character-based graphics, but the characters were programmable.
It consisted of a maze with a number of rat factories. The aim was to destroy all the factories and rats. As you destroyed each factory, the remaining ones would up production so that the number of rats being made would be constant. It could get pretty frantic towards the end. The rats would shoot at you, and if you hit one it would split into a few mice which would try to run into you. Almost all the game parameters were configurable too, which made it even more fun.
I clocked way too many hours of this while I was there.
Now, get off my lawn!
How about the Gorillas.exe that came with DOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)
May I please have my frontal lobotomy if I bring back the ashtrays?
Seems to me there's a really old one that got left out. Maybe I'm wrong, or this one shouldn't count, but IIRC the MUSIC system interface to the S/3x0 mainframes came with a text game called "Hunt the Wumpus." At least I never saw an implementation of MUSIC WITHOUT Wumpus on it, so I assumed that it came with it. Maybe someone who was a sysadmin (rather than just a user, as I was) in that environment can shed some light on that question.
Are we counting EMACS as an operating system? Because that comes with several games...
Mandatory testing for any newly built NetWare 2.x server..