Solitaire Central - The Web's Premier Site For Solitaire And Patience Card Games

Apple has a new solitaire game collection for the Video iPod, and judging from the screenshots, it looks promising.

Royal Solitaire includes 10 popular versions of solitaire, including Aces Up, Beleaguered Castle, Canfield, FreeCell, Golf, Klondike, Peaks, Pyramid, Scorpion, and Yukon.

Apple says that “crisp graphics and simple intuitive controls translate into hours of playing fun.”

I’m curious how well the interface works. It seems to me that controlling the cursor would be a little awkward, compared to a computer or PDA, but probably no worse than many phones.

(I don’t have an iPod, so can’t test it. If anyone tries this game, I’d appreciate your leaving your impressions in the comments.)

Royal Solitaire is available for $4.99 from the iTunes Store, and can only be installed on fifth-generation video iPods.

With Microsoft Vista due for a January 2007 consumer launch, you might be wondering what Microsoft’s version of Klondike Solitaire is going to look like under the new operating system.

Here’s a sneak peak at the new edition of the venerable game:

• The first image shows the new Games Explorer, which provides a front end not only for the games that are built in to Vista, but for new games that you download or purchase. The Games Explorer displays thumbnails of each of your games, along with details about the game.

• The second image shows one of the lush new backgrounds and the new card images in the game.

• The second image also shows as the new in-game hints system.

• The third image shows another solitaire skin.

• The new version of solitaire contains multiple deck choices, in which you not only get to choose the card background, but several entirely new complete decks. You can see two of them to the right, and old-style card graphics are also supposed to be available. No word on whether the game will support user-installed decks. I also do not know whether the card graphics are fixed-size bitmaps, or scalable vector images.

• The game will support multiple scoring systems. Not sure what these are yet.

• The game will offer the ability to save a game in progress and resume it later, right where you left off.

• There are also supposed to be some new end-game animations.

• The new version is supposed to support unlimited undo.

In addition to Klondike, Vista also includes updated versions of Freecell and Spider, with most of the same features as described above. There are apparently no new solitaire games included with Vista, which is something of a disappointment, since most prior major Windows releases had included new solitaire games, too. Perhaps that’s a sign that Vista is not as major of an update as Microsoft is making it out to be.

Zigiz is a European skill gaming site, and offers a large number of great games, including card games, puzzle games, and arcade games, all of which can be played for free as long as you like, or played for a chance to win great cash prizes.

Zigiz offers a nice selection of solitaire games, including:

• Fun Towers (TriPeaks)
• Pyramid
• Solitaire (Klondike)
• Spider

One of the outstanding features of Zigiz is that their gaming environment is quite rich, with great graphics and sound, and the games are also easy to use, with simple drag-and-drop or click-to-select interfaces.

However, some of their rules are a bit unusual. The Klondike and Pyramid games, for instance, offer no redeal, so if you see a move you better go for it, because you won’t get a second chance. And the Spider game uses only two suits (clubs and diamonds). I suppose this is intended to make a very tough game a little more manageable, but it is odd. The rules for the TriPeaks game are pretty standard.

Beyond any quibbles with the rules, the high production values in these games make them a very pleasant gaming experience. And their selection of other games (Mahjong Solitaire, match-three games, bubble-popping games, a Yahtzee game, etc.) make this a site worth checking out.

Play Games at Zigiz