Pinball Science
The Way Things Work was an incredible book series. Ask anyone of a certain age and they'll almost certainly remember checking it out from a library and staring at the pictures, following the diagrams, and ogling over the cross sections. David Maccaulay created a classic that was so popular it got a few multimedia PC "game" spinoffs as well.
The first one, which was released in 1994, is less of a game and more of an interactive version of the book. There were great sounds and impressive animations, but there wasn't much to play with. Still, it was enough to keep me busy for hours on end in front of the family computer in the den.
There was a sequel released in 1998 that I was completely unaware of. It's possible I was too old to be the target audience (I was outside of the age range on the front cover) and I was certainly distracted by many of the other incredible games to come out in 1998*, but when I learned about its existence last week I knew I needed to play it.
I was able to get a copy to play on my Windows 95 laptop. The conceit is interesting. There is a scientist who is stuck on the moon and the player needs to develop three different pinball machines to rescue him. However, each piece is locked behind three questions. If you don't answer them correctly, you can't unlock the piece. Thankfully there are dictionaries and other things to read in the program to help with this.
It's a fascinating piece of edutainment that leans harder on the edu- than it does the -tainment. The artwork and sound are very impressive, they feel like any solid multimedia encyclopedia from the mid-90s, and the questions are straightforward. I had a look a few up and finding the correct answer never took more than two minutes.
Where the game loses my attention is when you finally have a chance to play the tables. There are three of them and they're sufficiently busy, but they all play almost exactly the same. The tables are bigger than one screen so it scrolls along with the ball. This isn't something that I thought would bother me, but it does. I prefer pinball games that fit on a screen. Also, the sprites are big so when the screen scrolls down you don't have much time to react with the paddle.
Here's a video playthrough of one of the tables.
Don't take these as major complaints. The game is 27 years old and design has moved on. The main purpose is to make learning science fun and engaging, and it does that very well. It's more of a game that the first one in the series and, had I been able to put down FF7, I'm sure I would have spent hours playing it in the den as well.
Finally, this is your call to find an old game that you perhaps missed when it first came out and give it a few minutes of your attention. The Internet Archive is a great place to play many old DOS games in browser. Then hop over to itch.io and find new games that were made for and in the style of DOS and Windows 95.
Random cellphone pictures of my playthrough, just for fun.
*It's going to be hard for me to think of a better year for video games