The solitaire game which was one card game which most of us would have played at some point of time in our lives has been inducted into the Strong Museum of Play’s World Video Game Hall of Fame. Solitaire game was inducted along with other games such as Nintendo’s Super Mario Kart racing game, violent Mortal Combat game, and colossal cave adventure. Similar to Solitaire, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Kart had a tremendous impact in their respective categories and have spawned a generation of games.
The World Video game hall of fame was established in the year 2015 to honor games which enjoyed popularity over a considerable period and which exerted considerable influence in the video game industry.
For the class of 2019, they received a nomination from more than 100 countries and they narrowed the finalists to the list of twelve. Eventually, four were given the honor among which solitaire finds a place.
Don’t we all get a little nostalgic about this game? How many times the game has come to our rescue when we ever we feel bored? The game has always been with us, during our lunchtime, bored long drawn out afternoons in our work where we find nothing interesting. In a way, I feel that the game is like re-energizer. It’s the way it has worked out for me. I’ve always relied on a game of solitaire to get my focus back on track if my attention drifts out of the plane. Who could forget the iconic animation where all the cards jumping out of their stacks and bounce away after we clubbed the cards into a group. The success of solitaire paved the way for other card games like rummy, poker, and teen Patti to forage into the online sphere.
Solitaire – An experiment
Solitaire game was first bundled along with Windows 3.0 as a way for the users to get used to the mouse, which was fairly new those days. The game honed clicking, double-clicking, drag-and-drop and other skills required to operate the mouse. Since its inception then it has been distributed over a billion computers. Microsoft claims that some 35 billion solitaire hands are dealt each year. Game experts observe that Solitaire was one of the earliest success stories in the gaming community and its success helped pave the way for the casual gaming community. It seems like the game finally got its due with this honor.
The single player card game was developed by Wes Cherry during his time as an intern at Microsoft. Says Cherry “I came up with the idea to write Solitaire for Windows out of boredom, really. There weren’t many games right at the time, so we had to make them”. Wes Cherry didn’t expect such a mind-blowing reception for his lazy creation. And what’s more amusing is that he wasn’t paid for his creation.
It’s hard to imagine an online game occupying more screen time than Solitaire. In fact, the game was bundled up with every windows version till Windows 7 after which Microsoft started to include a few more generic card games. You could still see people play solitaire to assassinate free time. We hope the hall of fame status accorded to Solitaire has cemented its legacy and the future generation would continue to enjoy the game. Seeing Indians’ fascination for card games like 13 card rummy and poker, we could envision any of these Indian card games making it into the grandest stage of them all in the near future.