Microsoft Entertainment Pack (universe)
The Microsoft Entertainment Pack is a series of compilation entertainment software packages initially published by Microsoft for the Windows 3 operating environment. Most of the games are causal in design and are video game adaptions of either public domain card games, board games, or tile games, but there were a couple licensed games and several unique games as well.
Microsoft began the project in 1990 in an effort to add a bit of levity to the otherwise sterile Windows 3 environment. However, the project had a very limited budget and lacked any experienced game designers. Instead of hiring popular third-party developers, most of the games were the pet projects of in-house Microsoft developers. Their programs were packaged up with a little extra polish, and bundled with the occasional licensed game.
The developers were paid for their programs, not with money, but with 10 shares of Microsoft stock. Microsoft released four collections over a three-year span, and the company must have either not have saw the sales they expected, or thought their job of attracting home users to the operating environment succeeded because they stopped marketing the brand after only a couple years. They released a "Best Of" compilation in 1994, and tried one last package in 1997, before giving up on it. In 2000-2001, they licensed out some of the games to be ported to the Game Boy Color, but only two packages were made.
Contents
Personal
My family's first home computer was a floor model which came with Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows, so I spent a lot of time playing the games from that pack. Other friends of mine had other packs, so, in my teen years, I played most of the games. Although none of the games are fantastic, I still enjoy several of them. I appreciate the casual approach and wish Microsoft would have published more titles or, at the very least, updated them to work properly with later versions of Windows.
Works
Logo
The first pack didn't use a special logo, but packs 2-4 used the logo below which utilizes the typeface Helvetica Ultra Compressed. Each box colored the logo differently, but black was used the most. The logo was italicized for the "Best Of" pack and "The Puzzle Collection." The first Game Boy Color release used the same typeface, but the second uses a unique title.
I recreated this vector logo from the box art. The letters are stretched in height further than the default typeface, and the pack's number was placed in the lower right. I like this logo because it's both punchy and professional looking.
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