
Microsoft Solitaire Inducted into World Video Game Hall of Fame - Yuval_Halevi
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18530946/microsoft-solitaire-world-video-game-hall-of-fame
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joezydeco
The artwork on the cards was drawn by Susan Kare, a legend in the industry
starting with her work on the original Macintosh.

[https://www.aiga.org/medalist-susan-kare](https://www.aiga.org/medalist-
susan-kare)

You can buy a set of playing cards with her original Solitaire art on the
backs.

[https://www.areaware.com/products/solitaire-
cards?variant=14...](https://www.areaware.com/products/solitaire-
cards?variant=14622412804)

~~~
ducttape12
Oh man those cards are awesome!

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, I was really tempted to get it as a gift. Pity the EU version is much
more expensive, for some reason.

~~~
deadmetheny
After shipping they cost $22 USD - that's mental for a deck of playing cards.

~~~
icebraining
It's almost $40 for my EU country!

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imgabe
I wish Microsoft hadn't ruined solitaire. It's now "Microsoft Solitaire
Collection" with a whole online component and it's crippled if you're using it
without an internet connection. It also drains the battery like nothing else.
Sometimes you just want to kill some time on a plane without having to buy the
overpriced crappy wifi!

~~~
FreeFull
You should look at
[https://pysolfc.sourceforge.io/](https://pysolfc.sourceforge.io/) . It is
open source, and besides the classic Klondike solitaire, also has over 1000
other solitaire games. And it definitely will be a lot more energy efficient,
too.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Awesome been wanting to fix up my dad with a Linux desktop at some point and
Solitaire and Ping Pong from XP were games he played too. Gotta find Ping Pong
next.

~~~
FreeFull
On Linux, the other solitaire program worth looking at is KPatience. It only
has 12 types of solitaire, but has a pretty nice interface. It's probably
worth it installing both PysolFC and KPatience.

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scandox
They might have credited the intern:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3zfadv/til_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3zfadv/til_that_microsoft_solitaire_was_developed_by_a/t3_3zfadv/)

~~~
zyx321
They might even credit Wes Cherry by name, and not just as "the intern"

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mcfunk
Very disappointing, clearly they used the wrong deck back, it was all about
that palm tree with the sun that had the easter egg smiley face. ;-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
The robots were the best! They were animated!

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Insanity
The win screen with the jumping cards is my main memory of the game to be
honest :) pretty sure that's been parodied in movies as well.

~~~
neetodavid
For anyone who needs a little dose of that
[https://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/solitaire/](https://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/solitaire/)

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7j
"Microsoft Solitaire has likely been installed on more than a million
devices."

Probably billion, not million.

~~~
esrauch
It's likely been installed on more than a million devices too.

~~~
maxxxxx
Even on more than a dozen devices when you think about it.

~~~
gatesphere
At least two!

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pbhjpbhj
I once put a red card on a red playing MS "solitaire" (ie patience). It was
either Win98 or XP. That was a wtf moment, like how could they get _that_
wrong. Would have loved to have known what was going on there.

Edit: I misremembered, it was black on black; on WinXP. I have an image, but
of course it doesn't prove anything as it could easily have been photoshopped.

~~~
sangnoir
Did you have ECC memory? Might have been a flipped bit induced by a cosmic
ray...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Yes, non-ECC. The possibility of that depends on the internal format used for
cards, I guess if it were a binary format then a environmentally flipped bit
is a possibility?

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sudeepj
I still remember the blue deck (the one showed in the article) had black birds
who flap their wings. Nostalgic!

~~~
MisterTea
That was the spooky castle deck complete with flapping bats. My favorite
theme.

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todd8
On the iPhone, my favorite version of FreeCell solitaire is Solitaire City on
the App Store. It supports the standard rules, many optional forms/games, lets
you play head to head with friends, accepts the standard game number
initialization “seeds” if you want to work on a particular game, etc.

It’s the perfect game to pass a few minutes when stuck in a line/queue.

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aasasd
In my country, the Gamos' “Lines” game was a strong contender for mass killing
of office drones' time―if not the top butcher. It held strong from '92 until
around 2000.

(Known also as “Five or more” in Gnome games.)

