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conspiracy-theories dept.
If you haven't ever played Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts or FreeCell, it's safe to say you're in the minority. These simple Windows games have probably caused more lost worker hours than anything short of a worldwide coffee shortage. Whichever one was your favorite, the temptation to take just one more go at beating them—to get a faster time or a better score—was hard to ignore.
But as fun as these games were, they weren't actually designed for entertainment. At least not in their Windows incarnations.
The oldest of the four, Microsoft Solitaire, was first added to Windows 3.0 in 1990. Although the game (sometimes called "Patience") has existed since the late 1700s, this digital version seemed to be demonstrating that in the future we would no longer require a physical deck to play simple card games. But that's not what it was doing at all. Its real aim was far more modest: it was teaching mouse-fluency by stealth.
The intention was that Solitaire would get a generation of computer users still most familiar with a command-line input to teach themselves how to drag and drop, without realizing that's what they were doing. The fact that we're still dragging and dropping today suggests that it worked rather well.
It is highly probable that SN members were aware of the true purpose of these games but the article seemed interesting nevertheless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @01:00AM
$1.49/month to get rid of the ads [google.com]
...and it's $15 for M$'s stripped-down proprietary DVD player, which has been removed from the Windoze install.
People who have gotten off the M$ treadmill look even more wise to me with each passing day.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by TheB on Monday August 17 2015, @01:48AM
Is there a good version of solitaire and minesweeper on Linux?
I haven't found one better than the xp or win7 versions.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @08:50AM
For mine sweeper, go for Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/ [greenend.org.uk]
That version of mine sweeper guarantees that the game can be solved without guessing. There's nothing more annoying that playing a large game, clearing three quarters of the board, and then needing to guess the single square out of the next seven that doesn't contain a mine.
In short, it turns mine sweeper from a game of guessing into a game of thinking.
(Score: 2) by TheB on Monday August 17 2015, @11:27AM
His android collection is my favorite app.
...
Tried it.
The guaranteed solvable puzzle generator is nice. In time my muscle memory could get used to the different mouse controls. Not saving preferences is an issue though. 30+ playable puzzle games in 1.5MB is impressive.
The Android version is more polished.