SkiFree

SkiFree is a casual single-player sports simulator wherein the player uses the keyboard or the mouse to control a skier across a white background representing snow on a mountainside. ). The player can also opt to take part in three modes: slalom, freestyle, and tree slalom. In slalom, players must properly ski around flags in an attempt to complete the run with the shortest time possible.

Tree slalom adds obstacles to the slalom run. In freestyle, players ski downhill and jump off ramps while racking up points by performing tricks. Deductions are imposed for colliding into obstacles or failing to land properly after a stunt. When the player passes the 2,000-meter mark, the Abominable Snowman appears and starts to chase the player, eating them when it catches them.

While SkiFree creator Chris Pirih was a student at the University of Puget Sound, he wrote a text-based game called Ski in Fortran for the VAX/VMS operating system, inspired by Activision's Atari 2600 game Skiing. Later, as a programmer for Microsoft he was writing programming utilities used in the development of software such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. He had been focused on developing for the OS/2 operating system, but in 1991 decided to learn to write for the newly released Windows 3.0, and so created a new version of his skiing game in the programming language C, replacing the text-based environment with graphics. He called the game WinSki, and added exploitable, fanciful elements to demonstrate the new operating system's functionality, such as staining the snow yellow after crashing into numerous dogs and certain tree stumps transforming into mushrooms when skied on backwards.

Although he developed it on his home computer for his own education and entertainment, WinSki attracted the attention of a program manager for the Microsoft Entertainment Pack (MEP) when he noticed Pirih playing it at work. At that time, the first MEP had become so successful that the MEP team was designing two more. In October 1991, Microsoft shipped MEPs 2 and 3 for Windows 3.0, the latter pack containing Pirih's game renamed and marketed by Microsoft as SkiFree. It was distributed on Verbatim 3.5-inch GameSampler floppy disks, bundled with packs of 10 other blank floppy disks in the early 1990s.

SkiFree attained a cult status in the PC community. entertaining" as the first Pack. While ranking Klotski as the best of the packs and only noting SkiFree as a "simple skiing simulation", he recommended all of the sixteen games and praised each of them for taking advantage of effects that "show off the visual beauty that Windows can bring to a computer." In another 1992 review, Barry Simon of PC Magazine described the game's graphics as humorous and "not very extensive", and while he chose Pipe Dream of Entertainment Pack 2 as the game to purchase as a standalone title, at a bargain of US$5 per title, he recommended both of the packs.

Computer Gaming World described the MEP franchise as providing short gaming experiences, and noted its lead in the "gaming lite" category. By September 1992, the first three MEPs sold a total of over 500,000 copies.