General Video Games Bundled With Operating Systems

JayAgostino

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Personally, the ones bundled with Windows Vista were my favorite. When my son was very young, Purble Place would be the first thing he opened on my old laptop.
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Chess Titans introduced me to chess for the first time. It was easy for beginners like me, yet it still remained fun and never frustrated me to the point of quitting.
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When I was still using Windows XP, I would play the space-themed pinball game for hours.
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Colstan

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When I was still using Windows XP, I would play the space-themed pinball game for hours.
Space Cadet 3D Pinball actually dates back to "Microsoft Plus! 95" and was released alongside Windows 95. Most of Plus! was useless and a money grab for Microsoft aimed at PC users who were over exuberant about the Win95 upgrade. I don't remember using much of anything from Plus!, but I spent a stupid amount of time playing 3D Chess. I suppose I got my money out of that alone. It was certainly a better time waster than Minesweeper.

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In regards to the Mac, I didn't play any of the included games, but did find a use for the "Chess" program on OS X. I had the first Intel Mac mini with a 32-bit Core Solo CPU. Later, I upgraded it to a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo, but wanted to test to make sure it could run 64-bit binaries. At the time, the only 64-bit program in OS X was Chess. I think Apple used it as some sort of testbed to get early 64-bit code up and running, since it's a non-critical application. Sure enough, when launched, Activity Monitor showed it to be running in 64-bit, hence my CPU upgrade was a success. I upgraded so many things inside of those early Intel Mac minis that I butchered the audio cable in one of them. A few years ago I upgraded the RAM inside of my current 2018 Intel Mac mini from the base 8GB to 64GB, which is the only thing inside that can be upgraded. While Apple Silicon is demonstrably better, it also signals the end of internal upgrades for the Mac.
 
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