Microsoft Entertainment Pack - Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack, Chip's Challenge, Cruel (Solitaire), Dr. Black Jack, Fuji Golf, Golf (Patience), (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 23. Chapters: Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack, Chip's Challenge, Cruel (solitaire), Dr. Black Jack, Fuji Golf, Golf (Patience), Go Figure (video game), JezzBall, Klotski, Life Genesis, Mahjong solitaire, Maxwell's Maniac, Pipe Mania, Pyramid (solitaire), Rattler Race, Rodent's Revenge, SkiFree, Stones (video game), TetraVex, Tetris, Tri Peaks. Excerpt: Tetris (Russian: ) is a tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game's pieces contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport. It is also the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the U.S. and published by Spectrum Holobyte for Commodore 64 and IBM PC. The Tetris game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four element special case of polyominoes. Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, and the name was given by the mathematician Solomon W. Golomb in 1953. However, even the enumeration of pentominoes is dated to antiquity. The game (or one of its many variants) is available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as on devices such as graphing calculators, mobile phones, portable media players, PDAs, Network music players and even as an Easter egg on non-media products like oscilloscopes. It has even inspired Tetris serving dishes and been played on the sides of various buildings. While versions of Tetris were sold for a range of 1980s home computer platforms as well as the arcades, it was the hugely successful handheld version for the Game Boy launched in 1989 that established the game as one of the most popular ever. Electronic Gaming Monthly's 100th issue had Tetris in first place as "Greatest Game of All Time." In 2007, Tetris came in second place in IGN's "100 Greatest Video Games of All Time" (2007). It has sold more than 70 million copies. In January 2010, it was announced that Tetris has sold more than 100 million copies for cell phones alone since 2005. Tetriminos are game pieces shaped like tetrominoes, geometric shapes composed of four square blocks each. A random sequence of Tetriminos fa