Well Windows 95 was never a server. MS already had the much better NT and in those days it was not bloated.
When we graduated, maintenance was taken over by a local consumer PC builder and had no clue experience maintaining corporate/organization networks. They replaced all desktops and servers by Windows 9x (probably 98), as it was all they knew and the network was constantly down, desktops broken/compromised, etc.
NT 4.0 was a really good OS in those days for servers/work desktops. It was less great for games (though IIRC there was DirectX at some point).
What other game was needed in the 90s?
But Windows 2000 was much better for gaming. NT4 supported DX3 and DX5 unnoficially'.
W2k had a DLL call flag to enable a Windows XP like compat mode:
http://www.activewin.com/tips/win2000/1/2000_tips_43.shtml
It only worked on desktop shortcuts, but enough to run most quirky Win95/98 games.
Despite Win2k and NT4 kinda having a rep for not for gaming, I found that most games actually did run on them fine. Especially Win2k, probably the most underrated OS of all time in the Windows lineup.