From Windows 3.0 to Windows 10: The story of Solitaire

[Jos]

For over twenty years, a video game has tormented mums, dads and office workers the world over. And it has nothing to do with orcs, racecars or terrorists. It’s about cards. That game is Windows Solitaire, which from Windows 3.0 through to the Windows 10 of today has been (excluding a short break with Windows 8) included free with every copy of Microsoft’s operating system.

Sure, there have been many other popular games included with operating systems over the years. Minesweeper will be many people’s favourite. Others will prefer pinball games, or even the versions of Tetris that shipped with older versions of Windows.

But only one game can lay claim to having once been the most-used Windows application in the world, as Microsoft’s Chris Sells described Solitaire back in 2004. Considering the uncounted masses who use other Windows programs like Outlook, Word, Excel and Internet Explorer on a daily basis, both at home and in the workplace, that’s a frightening statement.

Read the complete article.

 

[Adhmuz]

Nice read, learned a couple new things about one of the most iconic Windows games ever made. It's too bad to hear the creator didn't get anything for coding it.

 

[Thrackerzod]

Nice article, I remember playing Tetris for hours every day on my uncle's 386. One thing though, Tetris was never shipped with any version of Windows. It was part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows however. As I recall the first game to ever ship with Windows was Reversi, included in Windows 1.0 and replaced in 3.1 with Minesweeper.

 

[lazer]

One of the things I hated about win8 was no solitaire. Micor$lop wanted to charge us for it. Found a few free solitaires out there instead until I finally could not use my old programs with win8 so I dumped it and instead put win7 on my computer. Now I am one of the world's experts in solitaire.

BTW, there is a free old version called 'Cheat Solitaire' that lets you cheat and peek under the cards. Don't know if it is available anymore, but was also great.