On this day (May 22nd) in 1990, Windows 3 was released, and with it, Solitaire by Wes Cherry, featuring illustrations by Susan Kare. While the idea of "Windows" Solitaire has since fallen from grace, into video-ad-supported, monthly-subscription-based nonsense, the original Solitaire will still work quite handily on a modern computer, either by way of the 32-bit Windows XP version, or by way of OTVDM that enables 16-bit Windows programs to run on 64-bit Windows. With some effort it can even run in Wine on Linux or (some versions of) macOS.
Solitaire's impact on the history of computing cannot be overstated. Although its intuitive click-and-drag interface had already existed for several years on the Macintosh (by way of the Apple Lisa), Wes Cherry's implementation had effectively snuck into hundreds of millions of workstation computers throughout the 1990s, not only wasting countless billions of hours of workplace productivity (to which I say, hell yeah, more power to you), but indirectly training users to get good at using the mouse.
And these days, you are absolutely spoiled for choice, as far as ways to continue to play solitaire on your modern device - to the point of it being a genuine minefield of awful monetized versions.
Want to play a solitaire game, right the hell now?
The above post's been updated with yet more links to good solitaires, with many thanks to the amount of Cohost users who helped me remember that a bunch of them existed. 🙇♂️
