Old Windows 3.x Games on the Internet Archive
Yesterday I linked to a Windows 3.x NYT crossword puzzle app from 1992 that you can play directly on the Internet Archive. I was a Windows user back in the day (my conversion to Apple didn’t happen until the early 00s) and so of course I had to see what other Win3.x games they had in their collection and re-discovered a couple of old favorites:
- The Incredible Machine. I loved this game…it was an early physics puzzler where you had to build contraptions to accomplish certain goals (like getting a ball into a hoop) with a limited selection of materials. (I just played for 20 minutes and I still love it.)
- Tripeaks. I’d forgotten about this solitaire variant.
- Freecell. This isn’t the official Microsoft version, but it’s close enough. I played Freecell much more than solitaire or Tripeaks.
- Pipe Dream. I actually had this one on Nintendo, I think. Or maybe my neighbor did? Another fun little puzzler.
- Minesweeper. Everyone’s played this at some point.
- Tetris. Ditto. Although I played mostly on my Game Boy.
- Klotski. Ok this one was the biggest nostalgia bomb of all. The name sounded familiar so I clicked on it and wow, I played so much of this one and had completely forgotten all about it until I played the demo. Wow wow wow.
- Doom. Of course.
Ok, that’s enough, I need to get back to work!
Comments 2
To add a couple of my favorites from those college days:
JezzBall. Cordon off balls bouncing in a rectangle. Seeing it now, clearly teaching people to right-click.
Chip's Challenge. This was the real time-sink on my dorm floor. Level codes were posted in the common study room.
Pinball. Again, hours spent here.
Also: I missed that I needed to renew my Kottke subscription until I tried commenting. Friendly community reminder for everyone who needs it to check and renew!
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection features a lot of fun little games similar in spirit to minesweeper with different difficulty levels. There’s also a playful seriousness about the collection, like adding settings in “Loopy” based on aperiodic monotiles (that link is *not* playful, but adding these tiles to a game is. kottke covered some of this in a more accessible way here).
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