SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

Re:SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows by kgliner on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:46PM (#28873566)

Plummer is flat out wrong that his port enabled our game to ship with Windows -- we built it for Windows (and for Microsoft) from the start. He didn't enter the picture until we were already shipping with the popular Microsoft Plus Pack (which put us on about 25% of all Windows machines). Honestly, I'd never heard of Plummer until a few years ago when a journalist asked about him.

Plummer's only role, near as I can tell, was to get it working on later Windows operating systems that were 32 bit (or certain 32 bit variants), which likely extended the shipping life of the game (so, not Windows 95 or Windows 98, but the others that followed). Microsoft actually had the option in our original deal to ship with the OS when Win 95 launched and chose the Plus Pack instead.

   Kevin

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Re:SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows by 22c on Sunday October 17, 2021 @09:47AM (#28896405)

Interesting insight but I think you're both "right". If I'm reading you correctly and understanding Dave correctly, the game was made for running in 16-bit mode on Windows. According to Dave, Microsoft did not want to ship any applications with their "flagship" 32-bit OS that were not able to run natively in 32-bit.

This, according to Dave, is also the reason you don't see Pinball shipped on the newer "64-bit" versions of Windows, despite the 32-bit version running just fine on 64-bit Windows.

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