Forget Solitaire and Minesweeper. The best game ever included with Windows was a virtual pinball table. With blinking lights and arcade sounds, 3D Pinball for Windows seemed like magic back in 1995, and is surprisingly playable even today.
But don’t check your Start menu: Microsoft hasn’t included Space Cadet Pinball in any release since Windows XP, and unlike Microsoft Paint, it’s probably not going to see a Windows Store reboot anytime soon.
Why isn’t this game bundled with Windows anymore? And is there any way to bring it back yourself? Let’s take a little walk down memory lane, before we show you a way to rip this game from an old Windows XP CD.
Why Pinball Was Dropped From Windows Vista
“3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet” is the most 90s Microsoft name possible. It’s unnecessarily long, includes the biggest buzzword in gaming circa 1995—3D!—and jams the words “for Windows” in there just to remind you which operating system you’re using. But despite the Extremely Microsoft Name, the game itself didn’t come from Redmond.
No, Microsoft commissioned Texas-based developer Cinematronics to build 3D Pinball, which was intended to show off the gaming capabilities of Windows 95 in a world where most PC developers were sticking with DOS.
Development of 3D Pinball was hectic, as this Daily Dot article outlines, but the team was able to pull it off. Microsoft included the game in “Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95,” a separate $50 CD that also included the precursor to Internet Explorer. The game was later bundled with Windows NT, ME, and 2000; Windows XP was the last version to include the game.
Why didn’t Windows Vista and later version of Windows come with Pinball?
Because Microsoft engineers couldn’t port the game to the 64-bit architecture without things breaking. Microsoft employee Raymond Chen explains:In particular, when you started the game, the ball would be delivered to the launcher, and then it would slowly fall towards the bottom of the screen, through the…
The post Why Microsoft Dropped 3D Pinball From Windows (and How to Bring It Back) appeared first on FeedBox.