The Great Operating System Games
They may not be the fanciest computer games of all time, but untold billions of hours of productivity have been lost to them over the past four decades.Posted by Benj Edwards | Sunday, August 1, 2010
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Since the dawn of computers, games have been an entertaining way to demonstrate a system’s capabilities. Manufacturers like DEC distributed them as early as the 1960s: They were as powerful sales tools with universal appeal. The tradition continued with some of the earliest PCs. Simple (but often addictive) games are bundled with operating systems to this day.
Here’s a look at notable games that have shipped with OSes through the ages–including ones written by a few of the most famous programmers of all time.
August 1st, 2010 at 10:12 pm
A nice trip down memory lane…I sunk hours into nibbles.
By the way, the last three nostalgia links all point to the lunar lander story. Unclosed tag?
August 2nd, 2010 at 7:52 am
Ha! nice.
I remember Gorillas – spent a lot of time on it with my brother. I had an IBM 8086 clone (i think it had CGA graphics, 8Mhz – 640k RAM, 5" floppies, and a 20MB hard drive). Also helped me learn basic. The good'ol days of DOS.
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:00 am
Wow, blast from the pass. I played gorillas once, and didn’t get a copy. Seeing the screenshot made me sad.
When I installed windows 7 professional, I had to enable solitaire and minesweeper :O
I wonder what our kids will say when they see these old games. “Wow! You played that? How does it work?” Right before we dive into a marathon old school gaming session with them
August 2nd, 2010 at 8:06 am
actually Mac OSX comes with widget "Tile game." Just thought I'd make that correction.
Anyways, I miss gorillas, I recently found a free mutliplayer clone called online artillery, for ios4. And I used to play that pinball game for hours, just love that music!
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:25 am
Where's Skifree?!
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:48 am
I guess it technically wasn’t an OS game b/c it required a disk, but I was hoping for a shoutout to the hovercraft capture the flag game that came on the Windows 95 disk. I miss that game, anybody know of somewhere I might be able to get my hands on copy?
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:33 am
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/games/public/AAS/Hover.EXE
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:28 am
Ahh, Skifree… yes. How did that one get skipped? How I loathed that damn monster that always ate you at the end.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:53 am
The two games I remember playing a lot were. RISK for Mac OS and Lunatic Fringe(screensaver game) on the LC II computer.
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:27 am
Hey guys, glad you like the story. I didn’t include SkiFree because it was part of an add-on games pack called “Windows Entertainment Pack 3.” Excellent game though — remember the Yeti that ate you?
Obviously this list isn’t complete, but I agree that the Windows 95 hovercraft game would have been a good one to include. And Harry added a reference to the Mac OS X Tile Game widget that I overlooked. Thanks for that, Dan.
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Hover was included with Windows 95 Plus! an addon pack for Win 95, so don't know whether it should technically count. Still love it though!
August 18th, 2010 at 9:13 am
There is also a free tile game that comes with win 7 and vista, it's in the side bar. Also, I still have my Windows 95 install cd, not the Plus! one and Hover is on it, it just doesn't install with the OS.
Also, you can escape the Yeti if you were to press F.
Also, Also, you can download a Win Vista/ 7 version of SkiFree for free at it's official website http://ski.ihoc.net/
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Oh, how i used to play Trek. Zero graphics, but i still remember the satisfaction i felt when i destroyed those romulans.
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
My Windows 98 machine doesn't have pinball…..?
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Same here… I've had legal copies, OEM installs, & upgrades for 98, 98SE, 2k, and XP over the years, but I've never seen that pinball game before!
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:51 pm
It may not be installed by default; just go to Add/Remove Programs, Windows Components, and you should be able to install it from there. Same goes for 2000 and XP I think. Even better just get a copy of the full game from Maxis called Full Tilt, it has three different tables and better graphics.
August 3rd, 2010 at 6:45 am
Neither does mine — I also haven't seen it in 98SE (upgrade), Win2k, or XP. (I thought maybe I was just forgetting things until I saw your comment!)
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:39 pm
I have best intentions with my words and only want to give some options. Please consider this.
Instead of mentioning Vista, which just had prettier versions of previous Windows games, why not mention something really cool and interesting?
Like how Caldera Linux offered a game of Tetris [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=tetris+during+caldera+install] during installation. Or how about a Live-CD chock full of games! [http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linuxgamers], instead of recycling the same games that just had makeovers.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I'd just say "Linux" (or GNOME Linux), rather than naming a specific distribution like LinuxGamers or Ubuntu. I believe I read recently that the environment (GNOME, KDE, etc.) determines which games appear unless the distro deliberately strips them out, anyway.
(FWIW, I'm using the latest OpenSUSE, and it came with a version of Tetris called Quadrapassel, plus Chess, Iagno, Mahjongg, AisleRiot cards, Freecell, GBrainy, Lights Off, Sudoku, Mines, and Swell Foop.)
August 2nd, 2010 at 7:46 am
Actually, if you read the credits in Little Brick Out, you’ll also see credit given to Bruce “Tog” Tognizzini. I have a lot of respect for Woz and learned much from studying Applesoft, Interger BASIC, and the Apple //e monitor ROMs, but it’s only fair to include this when we give credit.
August 2nd, 2010 at 8:51 am
Wasn't pinall out on NT 4.0 before windows 98?
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:52 pm
I believe so, in fact even in XP the folder that Pinball is installed to is named Windows NT.
January 22nd, 2012 at 5:42 pm
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August 2nd, 2010 at 9:28 am
Annoying article format.
February 3rd, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Nice effort, very informative, this will help me to complete my task
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:29 am
Nice article, but does it have to be on 21 separate pages?
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:29 am
You’re right about Little Brick Out, Hal. Turns out it was based on an earlier Woz-written program called, simply, “Brick Out.” I’ve updated the article to clarify this. Thanks.
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:49 am
Ah Nibbles… I loved that game, and spent many hours playing and modifying the original game. I added a third player, more levels, a random level generator, wrap-aroud screen, special powerups for certain numbers, etc. I even made a single-level "deathmatch" version where your tail never stopped growing. I learned a lot about programming from that game.
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:59 am
What about "Lemonade Stand" on the Apple ][ ? I still remember the mono speaker blasting out a rendition of "Yes we have no bananas" to this day.
Just an honourable mention at least…
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:15 am
How can you forgotten about the games that ran on the Commodore VIC-20 (Commodore BASIC 2.0) and Commodore 64 (Commodore KERNAL/Commodore BASIC 2.0); now because of those a lot of famous game programmers would've never really got their start.
August 3rd, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Well the Commodore OS didn't INCLUDE any games, if you don't count "Find Out New Amusing Ways To Make the System Crash". SYS 42200 gives you especially colorful and highly varying crashes. 🙂
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:25 am
3D Pinball For Windows (Space Cadet) was created by Cinematronics, a small windows-centric game shop in Austin. Maxis was the EU/N.A. publisher of Cinematronics' 3 table pinball pack (Full Tilt) which included Space Cadet, but that product was actually created after 3D Pinball. Maxis did later acquire Cinematronics.
I believe XP was the last OS it shipped with. I can't complain — not many folks have a chance to put their game in front of hundreds of millions of people.
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Another great OS game was Snipes, which came with Novell Netware. It was a networked game which allowed people on the same network to hunt each other down. Good post 5 PM fun.
August 17th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
This was the best! When everything else was banned on the network they had this running and we would play it for hours while waiting for other jobs to run. Those not in the know had no idea what the hell we were doing.
August 19th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Yeah, though it was famous for hanging our network, we kept playing it though, Melissa good call on Snipes, awesome game
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:17 am
jezball
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:54 pm
That was part of the Entertainment Pack, it wasn't included with Windows.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:23 pm
What came first, Cat & Mouse on OS/2, or Neko for Windows? Neko wasn't part of Windows, though, you had to go get it.
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:40 pm
probably oneko for X11
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:28 am
What about original adventure text game. almost every unix system had it.
August 4th, 2010 at 5:17 am
That is, in fact, mentioned on page 2 as being part of the same pack as Trek.
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Let me say that you have missed a WHOLE lot of games.
1. AMIGA. 15 years as a lead machine and not 1 mention.
2. that in the original win95/98/??? disks there was a directory with added games..you had to add them separately..
August 18th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Still have an original Amiga 1000 with a 256k upgrade and a 2000 with a whole footlocker full of games and programs. Was way ahead of the rest when they first came out.
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:36 pm
They left out all the terminalgames in the mac OS X. just open a terminal window and type:
ls /usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/play
August 3rd, 2010 at 9:14 am
I got the feeling that the author only included games that matched the OS's capabilities… It might also be because emacs is part of all UNIX-like OSes like BSD (which OS X is a derivative of) & Linux, or because the games are a part of emacs rather than standalone. Just guessing, though.
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:01 pm
What no Chip's Challenge?!?! list is now invalid
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:55 pm
That's because it was not included with any OS, which is what the article is about.
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Oh dear – does no-one remember that one of the key reasons Reversi was dropped from the Windows distribution was that it cheated, when playing as the computer?
The computer player turned over more discs than it was supposed to – no wonder it won so often.
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Really? lol. I never noticed that but I remember hardly ever being able to win.
August 3rd, 2010 at 5:05 am
Just to be picky – Reversi pre-dates Othello. The rules for the two aren't identical. Reversi goes back to (at least) 1883 and England; Othello is claimed to have been independently invented in Japan in the early 1970s.
August 3rd, 2010 at 5:41 am
So Gates, at one time, ate his own dogfood. Seemingly he had a hard time swallowing it. I remember looking at that code, seeing Gates name in the comment and believing it must have been a joke. Bill gates responsible for such horrid trash for which he even needed assistance ?
Now we get it !
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:37 am
no Chip's Challenge??
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:53 am
Agree with Melissa, except in the first job I had in a small company that has since gone bust, when the boss and his wife (the manager) where out all we did all day was play Snipes on Netware. NSSNIPES.EXE I believe it was called? This was until we all got PC upgrades and could play Doom of course. At 5pm it was always straight home 😉
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:55 am
How ’bout Ipod games?
I got a 5th gen that came with : Brick, Parachute and Solitaire…
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:58 am
Hearts! The silly computer was so darn easy to beat in one-player mode.
August 3rd, 2010 at 5:25 pm
My web site (http://www.bdragon.net) has a collection of the old SunOS console games, that still work under Solaris 10/sparc.
I love them!
August 3rd, 2010 at 7:34 pm
It should be mentioned that Wozniak himself had created the original Atari Breakout that he then cloned on the Apple II. Atari Breakout is not a computer game in the modern sense, since the circuit directly implements the game, without using a CPU or any kind of software.
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Where's Lemonade and Space Quarks for certain Apple II's?
August 4th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Ah, Gorillas… so that's where the mysterious Banana Bomb from Worms comes from.
August 5th, 2010 at 4:35 am
The big advantage to the Vista/7 versions of the classic games is scalable graphics. That's right, you can now enlarge solitaire without having the cards stay exactly the same size.
To all the people with fond memories of Chip's Challenge, SkiFree, and Jezzball, those were separately released in the Windows entertainment packs. (I think a lot of new machines came with it as a pack in, but I have no evidence to support this)
August 5th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
The original iMac came with MDK. Now that was a good time consumer.
August 5th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Used to play gorilla basic with a friend while drinking beer. When your gorilla was hit, you had to take a punch to the arm. Ahhh, those were the days!
August 6th, 2010 at 1:20 am
I'm told that Mac OSX comes with a tetris clone… it's an easter egg in Emacs.
August 19th, 2010 at 6:02 am
I used to play gorillas and Nibbles a lot!!! They were really good games at that time. I am 19 now and i remember playing them a lot with my bro 4+ years older than me. I was born playing them 😛
February 19th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Whats with the horrible formatting on this article?
February 21st, 2011 at 3:09 pm
If i remember correctly, the jigsaw puzzle for the Mac was not limited to just a picture of the world. I recall using the Mac's clipart browser to find clipart, copy, and then paste it into the jigsaw game. This may have been in a later version.
March 1st, 2011 at 6:49 pm
You missed the most "high tech" OS game of the 90's. Win 95 Hover Car.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Agree with the “horrid trash” aka Gates slop. Most of our computer woes today are a result of Alfred E. Neuman’s sloppy designs.
You missed “Zork” that was on the DEC PDP 11’s and VAX/VMS’s if I remember correctly.
May 10th, 2011 at 9:05 pm
For me the first really cool computer game was Spacewar. Written for the DEC PDP-1 around 1961.
July 5th, 2011 at 11:14 pm
Annoying article format really
July 10th, 2011 at 5:11 am
Disappointing list but he idea is cool.
No mention of the BBC Micro: how could you miss Elite! & Androids), Commodore 64: Wizzard, Z80 Spectrum Deathcahse….
August 30th, 2011 at 7:20 am
May have been forgotten as I doubt they sold very many in the US, but the included game with Acorn's RISC OS was David Braben's 'Lander' — a demo version of Zarch (or Virus as it was known on other platforms). It was a pretty revolutionary 3D game in its day, and really showed off the power of the ARM processor (IIRC, the demo was written in BBC BASIC, while the full game was a compiled binary).
How I wish for a version of Zarch/Virus on the iPhone or iPad…
October 19th, 2011 at 1:43 am
I must say, unless you're a serious gamer, most of these games will just go over your head without merit or mention.
Serious gamers on the other side, don't follow along like the rest of us minions who're into angry birds or farmville!
Granted, the above 2 games are trensetters but, like bubblegum, will be gone tomorrow!
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October 19th, 2011 at 2:02 am
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October 26th, 2011 at 10:00 am
I am one of those people who have lost countless hours of production to those games haha.
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November 20th, 2011 at 5:51 am
Pinball was awesome, minesweeper was a good time waster as well. Chess on Mac OS X isn't too fun!
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December 26th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
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January 21st, 2012 at 11:08 pm
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January 22nd, 2012 at 1:23 pm
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February 13th, 2012 at 2:36 am
Mac OS X is best operating system for that game it is very exclusive for this…
February 19th, 2012 at 11:37 am
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