I still have all those games me and my family used to play them all time such good memories.

Civ II, SimCity 2000, Oregon Trail II, Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, The Incredible Toon Machine, Microsoft Golf 2.0, Lander, a handful of titles across the Windows Entertainment Packs, etc.

There was a fairly rich Visual Basic scene. I'm sure it was true elsewhere as well, we had a bunch of really good small strategy games and such released in the native language here in Finland, most seemingly lost to time.

Space Bucks. A truly awful strategy game, but it ran on Win 3.x. One of the worst games I ever purchased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Bucks

https://www.mobygames.com/game/space-bucks

Also, you can view a whole list of Win 3.x games here:

https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/win3x/

ScrabOut, a free Scrabble clone:

https://archive.org/details/Scrabout_1020

Hodj N Podj, a board game full of mini-games, designed by Steve Meretzky, who also designed games for Legend Entertainment and Infocom:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/hodj-n-podj

The Adventures of Hyperman

Panic in the Park, an adventure game with full motion video:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/panic-in-the-park

Has anyone mentioned Lode Runner: The Legend Returns
Edit: yes

Iron Helix
http://www.mobygames.com/game/win3x/iron-helix

There is one reason I install Windows 3.1... Critical Path. It is one of the first "Interactive Movie" style games, and is consistently rated very poorly by reviewers, but it has major nostalgia points with me, and I still have the original CD and all of the original manuals, etc. I have never successfully installed it on anything other than Windows 3.1 with 640x480 resolution.

Plenty of good advice in this thread.

I tend to gravitate more towards games that integrate into the OS, being windowed, using the pointer and menus, etc. If the game is in full screen, using its own windowing system, then it doesn't really matter which OS is under it, and I just use DOS or Windows 95/98 with it.

- Battle Chess enhanced
- Sim City 2000
- Sim Tower (may need win32s?)
- The incredible machine 3
- glider

I also have a bunch of executables, I'm not sure of their real names, but
- neko
- pipe
- risk
- skifree

I tried civ 2 and myst, but I liked the mac versions better. better integration in the OS and better performance.

jarreboum wrote:

I tend to gravitate more towards games that integrate into the OS, being windowed, using the pointer and menus, etc. If the game is in full screen, using its own windowing system, then it doesn't really matter which OS is under it, and I just use DOS or Windows 95/98 with it.

Your post reminded me of a really excellent strategy game that runs on Win3.x:

Metal Marines

It actually uses several windows. You fire rockets from one window into another.

Battle Isle 3. Might even be a Win32s game. IIRC, it used Video for Windows to render the videos.

I didnt see it mentioned, but it would be a true shame to leave out EarthSiege 2.

MobyGames - EarthSiege 2 (Windows 3.x)

One of the few Win3.1 compatible 3D games, this 1996 release was meant for Win95 but had a Win3.1 backport version for some curious reason, so it required WinG and Win32s to function.

eXo (286) on Aug 12, 2014

as an update, all in all I dug up 3 different versions US release, US budget release, and Euro release. US Release was Win 95 only. US Budget release went back and added Win 3.11 win32s support. However it is unstable and not compatible with Win 3.1 installed within a dosbox environment. The Euro release was released with Native Win 3.1 and Win95 support. This release does work in a dosbox/win3.x environment once all necessary addons are installed.

Two more games I just thought of microman and chips challenge

breech wrote:

here is a decent list of 3.1 games http://www.uvlist.net/globalsearch?t=windows+3.1

not quite, try this: https://www.uvlist.net/search?fplat=97&fcols=g&ipp=c

Well, having finally some time (got the week off, yay!) I decided to get a DOSBOX folder set up to emulate my favorite PC of old: my IBM Aptiva. Using the original files from the recovery CD, I mimicked the PC in DOSBOX and with some tweaking, it works great! DOS is DOS but Windows 3.1 had its own layout, its own background, its own software specific for that machine so it was fun to make it look and feel like my real PC. As such, I decided to set it up as my main Windows 3.1 installation and install all my favorite Win 3.1 games.

Some if not most have already been mentioned but here's my favorites:

Civilization II (can't have a list without this one)
Castle of Winds
Metal Marines
Qwirks (brilliantly fun game from the creator of Tetris)
Zombie Wars (not as good as Halloween Harry but still amusing)
Lode Runner
The Incredible Machine 3
Battle Isle 3 (great game - looks way too small on a modern PC so this is perfect for Windows 3.1)
Earth Siege 2 (great Mechwarrior type game)
This Means War (fun war game)

red_avatar wrote:

Metal Marines

I thought I was the only person to play and love this game. The SNES version of the game is good too, but it lacks the cool window-to-window battles of the Windows version. I've never seen a feature like that in any other game. I think Metal Marines may be unique in that way.

ants.exe

Deadlock:Planetary Conquest was not bad as 4x TBSes of time went - somehow Civ2 didn't took off for me (only Civ1) but this thing did. IIRC req. WinG but not Win32s.

oeuvre wrote:

ants.exe

Hey, I remember that, along with "slug.exe".
- Wasn't it also a Win 2.x or 3.0 "game" (originally) ? 😉

Edit: These are some of the Win 3.x games that I liked to play back in the 90s.
They are mostly "desktop" games, though, as found on Atari ST (GEM) and Mac OS back in the 80s.
Also, they are Shareware and made by small developers (no "full" games like SimCity, Myst or Creatures).

- GNUChess
- Kye
- Fortress
- WintrekWintrek/Stellar
- Solar Vengeance II (clip)
- Warpath! (supports AdLib)
- Graditor
- Comet Busters
- Space Exploration Mission Alpha (Lander3 like)
- WormWorld

Edit: Just remembered some older 3.1-related postings of mine.
Not sure if they are helpful or fully on-topic, though. Hope you don't mind. 😅
Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ? and Re: Win95. yea or nay?
(posted few years ago; some unpopular thoughts of Win 3.1 gaming in the Win95 days).

Edit: Maybe this thread (not mine) is also helpful.. It's more on-topic, at least.
Best PCI VGA card for Windows 3.11 performance?