These are two of my favorites from this period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27 … e_Waste_of_Time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_ ... ideo_game)

Operation: Inner Space

Not very good, but played many hours:
- Indiana Jones: The Desktop Adventures
- Yoda Stories

I-don't-know-why-I'm-playing-this-thing-again:
- Winmine.exe

Reversi
This one was removed from all latter Windows versions...

PMIcons was pretty great - it let you replace the icons of individual Program Manager groups.

Eventually I figured out that since Win 3.x didn't really have any icon caching, startup times would be improved by packing each of the individual icons into one file instead of leaving Windows to seek all over the hard drive for each icon. (Some of the icon editors at the time supported a special ".icl" format for that specifically.)
Re: Want to take fun of windows 3.1 program manager

'Course, nowadays you would probably want to dispense with the Program Manager entirely and use Calmira II instead.
http://toastytech.com/guis/cal.html

I also had a special Task Manager replacement that was very useful for when Netscape crashed (as it tended to do) and wouldn't relaunch because its "hidden frame" was still running in the background.

Zup wrote on 2020-10-11, 16:43:

- Yoda Stories

Indiana Jones ran under Windows 3.x, but I think Yoda Stories required Win9x.

Jorpho wrote on 2020-10-11, 20:13:

Indiana Jones ran under Windows 3.x, but I think Yoda Stories required Win9x.

I thought it was a Windows 3.1 game, but I've tested and won't run (error 21). So it seems that my memories are hazy...

On the other side, I've remembered that Microsoft published a bunch of diskettes with games like "Microsoft Entertainment Pack"... although there were games that would like anyone, my favourite was Ski Free.

Non gaming software... I miss some screen savers like After Dark, but I don't miss others like "Chickens from Hell" or "Hey, Macaroni".

Norton Desktop for Windows!!!!
Operation: Inner Space

Paint Shop PRO 3.12, Warcraft2 MAP editor and winplay3 and of course Calmira.

slam

mod4win (& others)

Zup wrote on 2020-10-15, 06:37:

Jorpho wrote on 2020-10-11, 20:13:

Indiana Jones ran under Windows 3.x, but I think Yoda Stories required Win9x.

I thought it was a Windows 3.1 game, but I've tested and won't run (error 21). So it seems that my memories are hazy...

On real hardware or in emulation/virtualization ? 😀 - Win32s (v1.30c) seems to be very picky sometimes, for example..
Personally, I needed hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT/Vanderpool) in Virtual PC 2007 to make Win32s run.
Chances are better in PCem/86Box or recent DOSBox releases (say CVS/SVN or debug build) I believe.

Problem with DOS 21 Error when using Win32s based games
Win32s compatibility issues?
Re: Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ?

Apparently, the issue is not new either. Topic/Thread from ~2005 already mentions it:
Re: Windows 3.x says "ERROR: Unsupported MS-DOS version."

Edit: DOS error 21 can have several reasons, not just Win32s. Just mentioned it, because its a popular cause of trouble.

Zup wrote on 2020-10-15, 06:37:

Non gaming software... I miss some screen savers like After Dark, but I don't miss others like "Chickens from Hell" or "Hey, Macaroni".

Ah, yes, good ol' Rhode Island Soft Systems. I remember their "Hollyear vs Teethson" screen saver too. Different times.

Jorpho wrote on 2020-10-15, 18:21:

Zup wrote on 2020-10-15, 06:37:

Non gaming software... I miss some screen savers like After Dark, but I don't miss others like "Chickens from Hell" or "Hey, Macaroni".

Ah, yes, good ol' Rhode Island Soft Systems. I remember their "Hollyear vs Teethson" screen saver too. Different times.

Cool! I'm too young for After Dark I guess, but remember running that Johnny cast away (?) screensaver on my 286. Byte the way, wasn't After Dark inspired my Magic ScreenSaver from the olden Windows 2.x days ? 🙂
https://youtu.be/gCV8OPVY-uE

I once read something about this, but wasn't completely sure. Hence I wrote "predecessor" in the description. It had the same spirit, but perhaps not necessarily the same progeammers or code base (I don't know).