WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK

It's time for another software collection CD - this one is called WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK! A really promising name.

Just like Online Software Volume 2 - 1000 Utilities before it, WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK promises to be full of only the best hand picked software for your Windows computer.

The CD for WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK

The writing on the disk translates as "100 Incredible Online Software Selection Series!". 100 incredible pieces of software, all for me! That's not quite 1000, but maybe that means we're in for a more carefully curated selection...?

For this article specifically, we'll just look at the games included on WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK, but in later ones we'll look at the other exemplary works that this CD holds.

Alright, let's get to it!

Using the CD

Launching the CD opens up a window that lets us install some things we might need to properly look through the files on the CD. Useful!

Exploring the contents of the CD itself lets us open a local html page that categorises all of the files for us nicely to browse through:

I always like to see these custom html pages for browsing CD content, they're quite charming to me... Those icons for the different categories are so good!

But we're here for the games, so let's navigate to the games section:

It splits the games up into four categories - Action, Puzzle, Card Games & Board Games and Others.

Woah, that's a lot of games...

I decided to just cover the ones I found most interesting, which whittled the list down to 18 different titles:

Let's start with the Action Games!

Hyper Alpen

"A game about downhill, one of the most competitive events in alpine skiing. Drawing is also fast due to the wireframe display".

From the description alone, I could kind of picture what this game was going to be, but Hyper Alpen still suprised me with its unpredictable atmosphere:

The music...! The gentle movement of skiing down the slope, the simple trees... This was the first game I tried from WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK and it was a great start.

Looking through the menus, I saw that you could change the render style to a "3D red and blue" wireframe, which was made to work with 3D glasses!

I didn't have any 3D glasses to hand so I couldn't try this out, but I'll have to remember about Hyper Alpen if the opportunity arises to get some...

I found the music for Hyper Alpen charming, so here are the MIDIs converted to MP3s (you can download the files by right clicking and saving the audio):

Hyper Alpen - Track 01

Hyper Alpen - Track 02

Hyper Alpen - Track 03

Hyper Racing

"A simple mouse-controlled racing game. Run through 5 courses while avoiding collisions with other cars and running off the course".

Another game by the creator of Hyper Alpine! Again, I could picture what this game was probably going to look like, but it still made me happy to see:

It was kind of hard to control, but I respect the aesthetic.

Here's the music!

Hyper Racing - Track 01

Hyper Racing - Track 02

Hyper Racing - Track 03

Hyper Universe

"A full-fledged space shooting game. The easy operation using just a mouse and the speed of the wireframe display are irresistible".

The third game in the Hyper series to feature on this list, Hyper Universe would have cost ¥1000 on release - much more than Hyper Alpen's ¥200. Which makes sense, because there's a surprising amount to Hyper Universe - here's a video playing up until the game's first boss:

That's way more than I expected from Hyper Universe!

Here's a video from the first boss to the second:

I didn't play further than the second boss for now, since I knew there were a lot more games to cover, but it's fun to see that a lot of work went into Hyper Universe. It's great the creator made three games that made it to WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK!

I felt honoured to have gained the rank of " Famous Soldier "...

Billiard General Academy

"A billiards game where you can play nine-ball, four-ball, and rotation. You can freely perform cue ball actions such as pushing, pulling and twisting".

A billiards game! I don't think I've ever played a game of billiards all the way until the end in real life and I doubted I was going to play a full game here either, but I was interested in giving it a try.

I was happy to see this handsome gentleman upon starting the game:

Here's a quick video of trying out Billiard General Academy:

I didn't win! I lasted two turns!

The best part of Billiard General Academy to me was the music, especially that nice opening jazzy piano track. I have to wonder if the music for these games was just found elsewhere and used, or if some of the tracks were actually made for them...

Billiards - START

Billiards - START1

Billiards - START2

Billiards - FINEPLAY

FRUIT COLLECTOR

"A maze-type action game where you have to pick up fruits without getting caught by monsters. Let's set a trap and steal the fruit from the monster".

I love to see a game called "FRUIT COLLECTOR"!!

From the description I instantly pictured a Pacman clone, but we actually get something... A little different?

Look at that player sprite! Really good...

It does play a little like Pacman, except the maze is huge and loops forever. I seemed to run out of fruit to collect after a while and wandered the empty maze until the time ran out... I didn't figure out how to set any monster traps up...

I really liked the opening title music, so here it is!

Fruit Collector - Track 01

Bicycle Thief

"An action game in which the main character is a girl whose hobby is modifying other people's bicycles. Transport the bicycle to the garage without getting caught by the female police officers".

A good concept! Can't say I've seen this setup for a game before. Here's a quick video of me trying to play Bicycle Thief:

This game was scary!!!

I did manage to obtain a few bikes and take them back to the garage, but being chased was stressful...

I loved to see the full screen images that would pop up... And that spoken voice message at the end was a cute surprise.

You might have noticed the music sounds kind of insane by the second stage. I have to imagine this was a MIDI soundfont issue, because once ripped and converted they sounded more normal:

Bicycle Thief - END

Overall, really cute!! Clearly someone's passion project, I've never heard of these characters but I imagine they're original. Fun to see!

Rapid Fire - One Shot Match

"A game where you use your mouse to quickly shoot at enemies that appear on the screen. Quickly identify whether the player is asking for help or an enemy, then shoot the enemy".

I have to admit, I didn't fully read the description before I played this one, which might help explain why I immediately shoot an innocent bystander asking for help in this quick video:

I start it up again and get the hang of it though.

A simple game, but it charmed me! That opening screen where the guy's colours become inverted and he shoots with a gunshot sound effect...

This feels like maybe one of someone's earlier projects, but I think it's nicely put together. Congratulations for making it onto WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK, and now my article!

POPSNAKE 95

"A reborn snake game that's even more fun. Use the money you find to buy a present for the girl".

Ahh, POPSNAKE 95... It's already become a classic game to me, even though I only just found it this week.

It plays similarly to the classic game Snake, but instead you're working hard to find money in order to buy outfits that you give to the girl on the right of the screen.

As soon as I saw that this was the concept, I was instantly sold.

You can check which outfits you've found by viewing a little gallery:

I wanted to unlock all the outfits!!

I played POPSNAKE 95 for over 30 minutes...

I genuinely liked POPSNAKE 95, even though it was really hard! I'm not good at Snake games, I guess!!

I managed to unlock all the outfits for Level 1 and 2, but no more than that...

I tried ripping the images from the game's .exe but, no luck (and it felt like cheating...). I'll have to work hard in the future to unlock the rest of the outfits!

I really want to make a POPSNAKE 95 clone. Maybe I'll have to do that.

POPSNAKE 95 - POPSNAKE

That was the last of the Action games I wanted to look at in this article, so let's move onto the WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK Puzzle games!

BLOPUT

"A puzzle game where you control your character to move star blocks to designated positions. The use of other blocks that disappear when 3 or more come into contact is a power".

Something about me is that I usually have no patience at all for puzzle games. Or even small puzzles as a part of other games. Sorry, puzzles! I don't want to have to think for fun!

But, of course I have to have a go of a game named "BLOPUT".

Hey! That's the same character sprite from FRUIT COLLECTOR! Wow! This game developer is really good at naming games.

Oh yeah, and I softlock myself straight away. Thanks for the puzzle, BLOPUT.

I try the last available level for fun:

I'm not going to play any more of this game now!

Fruiter

"A puzzle game where you collect fruits in an ice room that doesn't stop until you hit a wall. Before picking up the fruit, you need to pick up a pill bottle of the same color".

Ahh... Cool...

A game that's made up entirely of ice puzzle levels...!

Another game by the same developer of FRUIT COLLECTOR and BLOPUT, Fruiter is... Well, another puzzle game I don't want to play any more of.

But I do love to see it and I do love a game called "Fruiter".

Fruiter - FT1

Fruiter - FT2

Fruiter - FT3

Fruiter - FT4

Fruiter - FT5

BUBBLS

"A falling object action puzzle where you stack four or more blocks of the same color diagonally to erase them. If you chain them properly, jammer blocks will fall on your opponent's screen. Battles between humans are also possible".

Another really good name for a game! I figured BUBBLS was going to be like Puzzle Bobble, but actually it was more like Tetris or Panel de Pon:

Seems cute! Games like these usually have fun characters, so I tried to see how many the trial version of this game would let me see:

Who's that giant blue face! A mystery of BUBBLS that I can't unravel right now, because we have so many games to cover!

Medastar

"Software that simulates a 3x3 cube puzzle. In addition to being solved by humans, it is also possible to find the solution automatically".

I'll never learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube in my life, so a game that does it for me sounds pretty good.

This is probably the most technically impressive game on WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK to me - I know solving a Rubik's Cube is just algorithms, so it's probably not that hard to make a program that can do it, but... As someone who has never even got close to doing one of these, it's cool to see it get figured out.

I liked the space background too:

PuSame32

"A powered-up version of the well-known Samegame. It has a powerful undo function and a campaign mode that spans multiple stages. You can also play Michigame, which uses directional pieces".

I think we've all seen or played a game like this, but this one had some interesting features I didn't expect:

You can change the pieces to custom .bmp tilesets! There's a few included, so I go through them all in the video.

BALLSMOVE.BMP

DANCING2.BMP

I really like the animated fruits - the detail on the frames is nice... I guess this spritesheet was made by 'E'd' in 1996! Thanks, 'E'd'!

Something I also demonstrate in the video is how small you can make the icons... Why would you want to play like this! I love that you can choose to even do this at all though.

I've picked two games from the Card & Board Game section that seemed the most interesting to me, so let's take a look at those next.

KK Town

"A board game with the theme of town development. Aim to increase the number of people to over 40,000 by buying land and improving the town".

I didn't really have the time to learn how to play this board game, but I did have a quick look at it to gather the vibes:

It seems cute! I like the town setting, and I really liked the dice sprites:

The music was also pretty good! I particularly like the second one that's titled MP0211GM.

KK Town - MP0210GM

KK Town - MP0211GM

Ship Sinking King

"A navel battle simulation game where you use radar to sink enemy ships. Place cruisers/destroyers on the board and fire missiles to attack enemy ships".

It's Battleship! But with dialog? That's what I found the most interesting about this game anyway, because as soon as I actually have to start playing Battleship, I close the game:

I always like to see a simple/classic game that characters and dialog have been added to, so while I won't be playing any more of Ship Sinking King, I do respect it.

Let's move onto the final category of the games on WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK - the Others section!

The MOKUMOKU Derby

"A software where you can enjoy racing with imaginary creatures called Moku. It might be more fun than bad horse racing software".

The description for this one is great. I want to meet the Moku!

This is kind of what I expected actually. I've seen a few simple horse racing games like this, they're fairly popular in Japan. But this one does indeed have Moku, so it's better.

I wonder if there are more games with Moku... I'll have to look sometime.

Jiji the Egg Seller

"Jiji's Adventures series starring the cute black cat Jiji. This time it's an action puzzle where you sort out colorful eggs."

Sounds delightful! I'd love to sort colorful eggs with Jiji the little black cat!!

Oh my god... This game is like a nightmare created just for me.

Once I realized what the base gameplay was, I wanted to go to sleep. My brain didn't want to think about it at all and wanted to turn off.

You have to create pathways to divert the falling eggs into the right baskets, but for 5 different columns at once, and once an egg is on a path it's basically already too late...

It's a great setting and all, but I cannot play this game even a little bit...

I tried changing the difficulty setting from "Mother/Father" (medium) to "Me/I" (easy), which has to be for the little kid of the family that this game was for (the hardest setting is "Older sister/Older brother").

Nope! Still way too hard for me. Wow!!

I thought a game called Jiji the Egg Seller would be an easy "best game on the list" for me, but... I guess not!

Jiji and the Mysterious Forest Episode 3

"Interactive picture book software. Turn the pages of the book and set out on an adventure".

Okay, this Jiji adventure sounds a lot more my thing...

Yeah! Okay! Walk around and talk to guys in a picture book. I could see myself playing more of this sometime and trying to post a translated video or something...

Look at this cute painter fox I meet at the end of the video!

Seems like some of Jiji's games are easier than others. It could be fun to try and track down the other Jiji games sometime!

That was a look at 18 of the games you can find on WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK! Which one was your favourite? I liked a lot of the music from these games, too!

Next time I look at WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK, I'll cover some of the other software on the CD.
If you'd like to download an ISO of WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK and tryh the games mentioned in this article yourself, you can download my upload of it here on archive.org.

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WINDOWS 95 POWER UP PACK - Games

Posted on 17/06/24