Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection
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Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection
- Platform: IBM PC Compatible
- Release Date: July 31, 1997
- Genre: Compilation
- Style: Puzzle
Game Description
Ten original puzzle types, ranging from quick fixers to brain busters, are included in Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection. Put on your thinking cap for logic puzzles, roll up your sleeves and prepare for eye-hand coordination to handle the action challenges, and engage your brain to outwit the computer in strategic-based contests -- but don't overlook good old-fashioned luck!Created by the Russian development group, Mir-Dialogue, the collection contains several puzzles designed or co-designed by Alexey Pajitnov who is known for his worldwide phenomenon Tetris. Of the ten puzzles, the concept for two are credited to Pajitnov while he and Vladimir Pokhilko collaborated on two others. A trial version of the game is available at the Microsoft Games website at www.microsoft.com/games/puzzle/.
The Pajitnov-Pokhilko designed games include Fringer, where you must inexorably fight time (ala Tetris) while untangling and untwisting knots from vertically strung ropes, and Charmer, in which you play various flutes causing snakes to rise up to a horizontal vine, thus causing colored pots to disappear from the screen.
In Color Collision, one of two by Alexey Pajitnov, you must control a color-coded moving cursor and hit matching colored circles and sticks to eliminate them and advance to newer levels. In Muddled Casino, the objective is to move target cards off the gambling table using strategy to manipulate them.
Other games include a mix-and-match challenge, Mixed Genetics, in which you must "breed" varied creatures with different traits to match a target creature, and a logic puzzle called Jewel Chase where you maneuver a thief through mazes, collecting valuable items and opening doors to tougher levels.
Finty Flush has overtones of Minefield as you race the clock and come to grips with spatial configurations, while Lineup also makes use of a multitude of shapes, in this case made up of varying types of sports balls that must be placed "just right" as in Tetris. The difference here is that you can't rotate the shapes.
The final two games include Spring Weekend, a game that challenges you to rotate rings of various objects to get the configuration to agree with a target display and Rat Poker in which you trap different colored rats and combine them to allow escape from their maze. All ten games provide pop-up windows to register and save high scores.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide
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Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection
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Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection
| Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Mir - Dialogue Conspiracy Entertainment (GBC) |
| Publisher(s) | Microsoft Games Swing! Entertainment (GBC) |
| Designer(s) | Alexey Pajitnov |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Game Boy Color |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Puzzle |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Media/distribution | CD-ROM |
| System requirements
Windows 95/98/ME/XP, 486DX2 (66MHz) or higher, 8 MB RAM, 30 MB of available hard-disk space, Single-speed or faster CD-ROM drive, Super VGA display (800x600 resolution), Local or PCI-Bus SVGA; Display capable of 256 colors |
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Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection is a collection of 10 puzzle computer games developed by Mir - Dialogue and published by Microsoft Games. The creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, designed some of the games featured in the pack. It was released on CD-ROM for Windows 95. It was also bundled as part of the Microsoft Plus! Game Pack which was released after Windows Me.
A version was made for the Game Boy Color. It features six of the games from the PC version (Fringer, Charmer, Mixed Genetics, and Muddled Casino have been omitted). [1]
Presentation
Each game in the collection runs in a window using 256 colors. They use MIDI background music and digitized sound effects. Controls vary from game to game - each game uses either the keyboard or the mouse.
Games
- Fringer - Untie all the knots in a stage before a knot is pushed to the bottom of the screen, at which point the game ends.
- Finty Flush - Fill a 4×4 grid with predetermined combinations of marbles before the screen fills up with too many marbles.
- Mixed Genetics - Breed mutated animals in groups of three to create pure animals.
- Rat Poker - Coloured rats enter and walk clockwise around a playing area. Rats will only exit if they line up in specific patterns such as three in a row of the same colour. The player lifts rats off the 'conveyor belt' onto rotating spokes, and then releases them again in the best order so that they will exit and the playing area is not overrun.
- Lineup - Various pentominoes composed of sports balls must be placed on the playing field to form a continuous row from one end to the other. When this is done, all shapes used to form the row will disappear. The game continues until the queue of shapes waiting to be placed fills up.
- Jewel Chase - Steal as much loot as possible before the other, computer-controlled robber does and get to the exit first or you lose. The playing area is a colour maze. At any time a robber occupies a square made up of up to 4 different colours. When the player selects an arrow-key, the robber will move to the nearest square if available in that direction that has a colour in common with the current square. The game can be played in a training mode which allows you to walk the 100 colour mazes collecting all gems without a time limit.
- Color Collision - Control a ray of light and hit sun-like discs of matching colour. Bonuses are scored for hitting discs when they are smiling, "turned on", or about to explode, etc. depending on the level.
- Charmer - Charm snakes to a vine to make their pots disappear, without letting the lids fall and create another pot.
- Spring Weekend - Arrange the garden critters into a certain pattern before your moves run out. The playing area is a hexagonal grid. By right-clicking or left-clicking on a hexagon position, all 6 adjacent hexagons will rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise respectively.
- Muddled Casino - Figure out how to move the cards off the table in the correct order to beat the house.
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