Το παιχνίδι Solitaire της Microsoft ή στα Ελληνικά solitaire, which taught the world to use the mouse and waste their time, turns 30 today.
The solitaire game was first released with Windows 3.0 in 1990. It was a great recognitions and is still played today by 35 million people a month, in 200 countries and 65 languages.
Windows 3.0 was the first popular one version of Windows, having sold 10 million copies. At the time, many people were used to text-based DOS and had never used a mouse. Solitaire was probably the first app, and indeed game, that taught users how to drag and drop in a colorful and highly addictive way.
The game was created by Wes Cherry when he did his summer internship at Microsoft in 1988, and not a single cent was paid for it. In its original version it even had a "boss mode" that allowed you to spawn one false spreadsheet if your boss suddenly showed up. However, this feature never made it to the final version of Windows 3.0.
Solitaire is not only a great game, but it was a way to control the speed of your computer. It started shortly after Intel introduced the 80286 processor, which bounced the cards at a realistic speed. Microsoft obviously made the animation according to the performance of your computer, so by the time the Pentium processor arrived, it was running at high speed.
Solitaire was removed from Windows in version 8, but Microsoft brought it back for Windows 10 in 2015. The Microsoft Solitaire Collection now has five different games, along with daily challenges, Xbox Live integration, and even contests. To celebrate the anniversary, Microsoft invites players to participate in its event "Aiming to get to most of the Microsoft Solitaire games completed in one day."
