In 1990, the planets must have been in alignment, because Windows 3.0 was released and it was pretty damn good! It wasn't up to par with Mac OS yet, but who cared? (Real programmers hate Macs.) Finally, software developers could create sexy applications on the PC and start migrating away from DOS for business applications. Let's stick to DOS, and can I have another cocktail?' Windows 3.x The verdict of the board that day: 'Not bad, but not a viable OS for development. PM simply looked a lot better, and it was based on OS/2, a vastly more advanced OS than Windows 2.0 (which was still a window manager simply overlaid on top of DOS). However, at this time IBM Presentation Manager (PM) was out. We ran the Windows 2.0 beta demo and loaded multiple applications, and it seemed to work. There was a boardroom filled with executives and the president of the company (as usual, he had a cocktail in his hand). I actually remember working at Software Publishing Corporation when we got the beta of Windows 2.0. Nevertheless, Microsoft forged ahead, and shortly thereafter it released Windows 2.0. Sarcasm aside, the problem was that Windows 1.0 needed much more hardware, graphics, and sound capabilities than the 80286 (or worst yet, 8086) machines of the time had to offer. Its looks were probably the most important reason for its failure.

Windows 1.0 was based completely on DOS (big mistake), wasn't multitasking, ran really slow, and looked really bad.

This was Microsoft's first attempt at a commercial windowed operating system, and it was pretty much a failure. It all began with the release of Windows 1.0. To put you in the mood for the onslaught of horror that I'm about to unleash upon your mind (especially you DOS diehards), let's take a quick look at how Windows has shaped up over the past years and its relationship to the game development world-shall we? Early Windows Versions

Windows 95 game