While 1000 Best Games for Windows has a fairly lackluster presentation, it does live up to its promise. Although not all of these shareware games are necessarily the "best," there is a lot of fun to be had in this extensive collection, once users get the hang of how it works.

The organization of this collection of games is a bonus, although some of the categories tend to cross over each other. Still, the divisions keep long list of games from becoming overwhelming and allow players to ignore the ones they're not going to be interested in. The games are given little more than descriptions and registration information, and while screen shots for them are nice, browsing the games is quick and easy.

Installation of individual games varies, and quite a few are troubled in this area, giving users errors about missing DLL files or missing archive files. Mostly, the games aren't directly installed onto the user's computer, but the necessarily zip or setup file is copied, and players have to extract it from there, causing the creation of a lot of unnecessary folders. For some games, the inconvenience barely seems worth it, but with patience, players can find some great games.

The diversity and general good quality of games in 1000 Best Games for Windows gives it an advantage. Although there are many clone games, like an abundance of Tetris imitations and Pong copies, most games feature original ideas, from the serious-minded games like Tasholiiwe to the absurd like Catch the Unabomber. The large selection of games just for children is also a good feature of this collection.

Still, 1000 Best Games for Windows doesn't make things as easy as they could be for their users, and that will more than likely cause frustration. Overall, though, this is an impressive selection of games, even if it takes some getting used to. ~ Eden Miller, All Game Guide

Although it is a collection of mostly shareware games, the graphics are surprisingly good as a whole. ~ Eden Miller, All Game Guide

The sound varies from game to game, but is decent overall. ~ Eden Miller, All Game Guide

There are a lot of fun games to be found in this collection. ~ Eden Miller, All Game Guide

Some games are definitely not worth playing again, but plenty will keep players coming back. ~ Eden Miller, All Game Guide