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Entertainment Pack for OS/2 Webshrine

Entertainment Pack for OS/2 is a collection of OS/2 games. The initial release had 4 games, which gradually increased to 27.

Entertainment Pack, as a whole, did not have a version number, but the archive names were sequential from entrtain.zip to entrtan8.zip. After that point, subsequent releases based the archive name on the number of games in the Entertainment Pack (entrn14, 17, 21, and 27). Despite the lack of version numbers, we can be certain that there are no gaps in the version history because all but the earliest archives list the games that have been added since the previous release.

Version matrix

There are 11 known releases of Entertainment Pack for OS/2, each with a different number of games. The version number appears in bold in the matrix below if it is different from the version in the previous release.

Zip nameentrtainentrtan2entrtan4entrtan5entrtan6entrtan7entrtan8entrtn14entertn17entrtn21entrtn27
Date1-Dec-9328-Jan-9410-Sep-9426-Dec-948-Apr-9522-July-9528-Jul-958-Aug-9520-Feb-9610-Mar-9624-Apr-96
Game count467810111214172127
Battleship1.01.01.01.01.11.11.1
Backgammon1.41.41.41.41.41.41.41.41.41.41.4
Checkers1.51.51.5
Connect Four2.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.3
Eleven1.0
Galaxy1.01.01.011.011.011.011.011.011.01
Golf1.01.0
Greed1.0
King 'n Ace1.0
Master Mind2.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.32.3
Memory1.01.11.11.1
Mine1.01.01.01.01.01.0
Othello1.01.01.01.01.01.01.01.01.01.0
Pac1.01.01.01.01.0
Peaks1.0
Pegged1.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.1
Poker1.01.0
Puzzle1.01.01.0
Pyramid1.01.0
Roulette1.01.0
Scrooge1.0
Store1.01.01.01.0
Tetravex1.01.01.011.011.011.011.011.01
Tetris1.01.01.01.01.01.01.0
Tic Tac Toe1.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.11.1
Towers1.0
Worm1.01.01.0

Game Descriptions

Battleship

The classic game of Battleship, in which two players position ships ranging in length from two to five units on a grid, and players cannot see each other's fleet. They take turns "firing" at coordinates, and they are informed when they have successfully hit or sunk a ship. A ship is sunk when it has been struck in each of the two to five coordinates that it covers. Ships do not move after they have been positioned on the grid.

Backgammon

Introduced: entrtain.zip
Versions: 1.4
Copyright: Peter Wansch, 1993
Icon:

The classic board game of Backgammon. Players take turns rolling two dice, and moving their pieces around the board in a race to the finish. Pieces must move exactly the number of points that appear on each die. For example, if a player rolls 2 and 4, he can move one piece 2 places and another 4, or he can move the same piece 2 places and then 4 places, or 4 places and then 2 places. Pieces can only land on a position that is empty, or that has only one opposing piece on it. Landing on an enemy piece is called a "hit", which causes it to be removed from the board, and the player must return it to the board before he can make any other move, which is accomplished by rolling the dice and placing the piece back in his home area at the beginning of the board at the position number specified by one of the dice.

A player wins by a "gammon", worth double the stakes, if he bears off all of his pieces before his opponent bears off any of his own pieces. A player wins by a "backgammon", worth triple the stakes, if he bears off all of his pieces while his opponent still has pieces within his own house, or waiting to be re-entered following a hit.

Backgammon is a game of deep strategy and tactics. A good player must decide whether to immediately advance his back pieces, known as "runners", in an attempt to bear off first (known as "the forward game"), or he may attempt to create an impassable barrier on six consecutive points, to trap his opponent's runners (known as "the backward game"). The other critical area of strategy is the doubling cube. If a player believes he is going to win, but by no more than a gammon, he can offer to double the stakes of the game, and the opponent loses instantly if he refuses. If accepted, the doubling cube is passed to the player who accepted the offer, and now only this player can offer to redouble the stakes.

Checkers

The classic board game of Checkers, known as Draughts in Great Britain, and Dames in other parts of the world.

Connect Four

Introduced: entrtain.zip
Versions: 2.3
Copyright: Peter Wansch, 1993
Icon: (entrtain to entrtn14), (entrtn17 to entrtn27)

The classic board game of Connect Four, which is basically a large game of Tic Tac Toe with a gravity element, which requires squares to be filled from the lowest empty position in any given column. The game is won by getting four or more of their own pieces in a row, orthogonally or diagonally.

Eleven

Galaxy

Golf

Not the outdoor sport, but a card game called Golf.

Greed

King 'n Ace

Master Mind

Introduced: entrtain.zip
Versions: 2.3
Copyright: Peter Wansch, 1993
Icon:

The classic game of deduction, in which you have to deduce a sequence of four colors.

Memory

The classic memory matching game.

Mine

An OS/2 version of Minesweeper. The player clicks on a point on the grid and, assuming that it isn't a bomb, the square will display the number of bombs that are adjacent to it in any of the eight compass directions. If there are no bombs in the adjacent square, all of the surrounding squares that do not contain bombs are revealed, expanding the revealed area until squares with adjacent bombs are encountered.

Othello

The classic board game of Reversi, better known by Pressman's trademarked name "Othello". Players take turns placing a piece on the board, which must sandwich opponent's pieces between another of their own pieces, causing all of the pieces in between to switch to the capturing player's color. A player must pass his turn if he cannot sandwich any of his opponent's pieces. Once the board is full, or neither player can make a legal move, the player with the most pieces of his own color on the board wins.

Pac

Based on the classic arcade game, Pac-Man. As in the arcade game, Pac must eat all of the dots in a maze that is patrolled by ghosts. Pac loses a life if he touches a ghost, but the ghosts become temporarily vulnerable (and slower) when Pac eats a cherry. There are a few minor differences between Pac and Pac-Man: all of the ghosts are the same color, and they don't slow down when they pass through one of the side tunnels. Unlike the original Pac-Man (but like Ms. Pac-Man), there is more than one maze.

There is also one major new innovation: pressing the spacebar causes Pac to "phase out", so that he passes through everything (ghosts, pellets, cherries, and bonuses). This causes his score to drop rapidly. Pac returns to normal when the spacebar is pressed again, or when he runs out of points.

Peaks

Pegged

Peg solitaire.

Poker

The classic card game of Poker.

Puzzle

The classic picture rearrangement game, where a picture composed of square pieces is scrambled, and a single square is left empty. Any adjacent piece can move into the empty piece, allowing the picture to be unscrambled.

Pyramid

Roulette

The classic casino game of Roulette. A ball is dropped onto a wheel that has numbered slots from 0 to 36. The slots from 1 to 36 are colored either red or black. The player can bet on what slot the ball will land in (when the wheel stops spinning) in a number of ways, such as betting on the exact slot, or one of two or four slots that appear together on the table, or the first, second or third 12 slots (excluding 0), 1-18 or 19-36, an odd or even number (excluding 0), or a red or black slot. The payout is slightly less than the odds of correctly guessing the outcome. For instance, the payout is 35-1 for guessing the exact slot, while the odds were 37:1 against. The payout is 1:1 (a bet of $100 wins $100) for betting on a color, or on even or odd, while the odds are 18/37 (slightly less than 50%). Unlike Poker or Blackjack, Roulette is a game of pure random chance, but it remains popular in casinos because the odds favor the house by a very small margin.

Scrooge

Store

An OS/2 port of Sokoban. The player must push boxes into a goal zone, but the boxes cannot be moved in a given direction if they run into a wall or another box.

Tetravex

Tetris

The classic game of Tetris. Pieces composed of exactly four units in one of seven configurations fall from the top of the screen. The pieces can be rotated as they fall, and the goal is to make the pieces fit together so that there are no gaps between them. Once a piece lands on the bottom of the screen, or on other pieces, the game scans each column to see if are there are any columns that are completely filled by pieces. Any complete lines are removed from the grid, and the pieces above the removed lines fall by the number of lines that were removed below them.

Tic Tac Toe

The classic game of Tic Tac Toe. Players take turns placing an X or an O into an empty square on a 3×3 grid, winning the game if they can get three in a row in any direction. With perfect play, every game of Tic Tac Toe should be a draw, and the small number of legal moves makes perfect play quite easy. This version of Tic Tac Toe includes two three-dimensional variants (3×3×3 and 4×4×4) to make the game more challenging for adult players.

Towers

Worm

Based on the classic Snake game, this version of the game starts with a number of cherries on the playing field. A counter counts down from 99, and is reset every time the player eats a cherry. The snake grows longer as it eats the cherries. The player loses a life if the snake runs into a wall, itself, or if the countdown reaches 0. Once all of the cherries have been eaten, the countdown stops and a door opens in one of the walls, which the snake must pass through to reach the next level. Each level becomes more challenging, by adding walls inside the playing field.

Bugs and glitches

Infinite lives in Pac

The players gets a bonus life upon reaching a score of 10 000, and it is possible to reduce your own score by "phase shifting". The game doesn't keep track of this, so you can keep reducing your score below 10 000 to get as many bonus lives as you want.

Trivia

entrtan6.zip claims that the only game added since the previous release was Battleship, even though Tetris is also new since entrtan5.zip. After an exhaustive search for the missing release, I am confident that this was simply an oversight on the part of the author.

While I have been unable to locate a copy of entrtan3.zip, I have found documentation referring to entrtan3.zip containing 6 games (entrtan2 has 6, entrtan4 has 7). Since the version number of all games in entrtan4 are the same as in entrtan2, it would appear that entrtan3 introduced no new games, and didn't update the version number of any of the existing games. This leaves the possibility of documentation change, bug fixes that didn't result in a version number change, or an unauthorized release by a third-party, which led to the author skipping to entrtan4.zip to avoid confusion between the authorized and unauthorized versions of entrtan3.zip.