Good Old Games is selling Sierra's The Incredible Machine series for $10.  Having enjoyed the game in the past, I decided to buy it and give it a shot again.  It's just as fun as I remember it... with some caveats.

The game pack comes with The Even More Incredible Machine (includes The Incredible Machine with extra puzzles), The Incredible Machine 3 (Windows version of The Incredible Machine 2), Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions and The Incredible Machine - Even More Contraptions.

Of all the games, unless you've got some serious nestalgia, the last two (Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions and The Incredible Machine - Even More Contraptions) themselves are worth the money.

The Even More Incredible Machine and The Incredible Machine 3 are neat, but the graphics are subpar, the music is annoying, and TEMIM has the nasty habit of trying to grab your whole screen and mouse and going into a fit if you task switch out.  Not very fun.  The "Windows Version" is just as annoying.  The puzzles are quite fun;  so if you're willing to mute the sound, not switch out of the game, and constantly write down 25 character passwords after each puzzle as game crash insurance, they're OK to play.

RotIM:C and TIM-EMC are incredibly fun, however.  The music is nice, the graphics pop, and I've yet to run into a show stopper bug.  And you can save the game.

The puzzles in The Incredible Machine are as zany as the parts you put in.  Drop a basketball into a hopper, shoo a cat off the platform and cook toast using only a match, a blimp, and a thumbtack.  After about level 25 in all the games the solutions become really zany, and sometimes nefariously complex.  Sure, there's plenty of resources on the Internet to show you the solutions to the puzzles, but I guarantee you... The Incredible Machine is one of those Old School Hard games that make suddenly waking up at 1 AM with the solution to the puzzle so much fun.

The later two versions of TIM have an awesome feature as well, which will allow you to see how the level designers originally imagined solving the puzzle.  Sometimes the difference is just a difference of how you placed the parts;  other times the differences can be completely profound.  And some times you use completely different parts to solve the puzzle than they planned, or you found a way to use less parts.  All of these just add more spice to the game, and are another bonus to the later versions of TIM.

All in all, for $10 The Incredible Machine is an excellent addition to your catalog (unless you already own it... and you already own it, right?).  It's the perfect game for filling up a spare 10 minutes or even burning away a cold lazy day in winter.  The puzzles are challenging, but always have solutions.  And the physics engine for the game is 100% deterministic, which means you don't have to worry about some random number generator causing a puzzle to fail (however, I have had puzzles depend on, say, pixel perfect placement of a basketball).  The puzzles and items are quite whimsical... what, you haven't bought it yet?  Well, go!

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_incredible_machine_mega_pack