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With the upcoming release of Microsoft Windows Vista, independent publishers are scrambling to make sure their games are compatible with the new operating system. The following are the first shareware solitaire games I’m aware of that have been updated specifically for Vista:

• Pretty Good Solitaire v11.0.1

• BVS Solitaire Collection v6.2.1

• Action Solitaire v1.12

Apparently the required modifications are more than trivial, and include changes to the help system and how the application installs and interacts with the new Vista Game Explorer, so we’ll need to keep an eye out for how existing programs fare under the new OS once it becomes available.

The Zeebys, the casual game industry’s version of the Oscars, is a new award that honors the best casual games of the year. You can vote for your favorites from among categories such as Arcade & Action Games, Puzzles, Word & Trivia Games, Strategy Games, and Card, Board & Mahjong Games.

It is in the latter category (Card, Board & Mahjong Games) that two recent casual solitaire games have been nominated:

	Dream Vacation Solitaire Play more than 30 different kinds of solitaire for trophies, prizes and more on a dream vacation through five exotic locales! By Oberon Media.
	Jewel Quest Solitaire Riches and glory are in the cards! The creative minds behind Jewel Quest return with a Solitaire card game like no other! By IWin.

Other popular games nominated, in various categories, include Bookworm Adventures, Diner Dash 2: Restaurant Rescue, Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst, Virtual Villagers, and many more.

Voting runs through the end of January, and winners will be announced on February 8, 2007. If you haven’t tried these games out yet, please do, then Vote!

The latest update to Freeverse’s Burning Monkey Solitaire was released in mid-November, and reviews have started to come in. Here are a few links in case you’re interested:

• Blogcritics.org
• The Mac Observer
• VersionTracker User Reviews

Burning Monkey Solitaire offers over thirty solitaire variants, along with joke-telling apes, singing gorillas, flatulent orangutans, and lousy jokes as only monkeys can tell them. The game includes native support for both PowerPC and Intel Macs (Freeverse says a Windows version is “coming soon”), with a list price of $24.95.

The the new Windows Vista operating system will include three familiar solitaire games - Klondike, Freecell, and Spider (see Vista Solitaire) - but the biggest news is not the games themselves, but the appearance of the games. In a post at istartedsomething, Long Zheng provides a few details about the new card decks we should see in Vista.

Long reports that Vista comes with four unique deck designs:

• Classic Deck
• Hearts Deck
• Seasons Deck
• Large Print Deck

The image on the right shows the first three decks, which share common A-10 images, and unique face cards for each deck (click the thumbnail to see a full-sized image).

Long also reveals that the card decks, along with all of the casual games included with Vista, including the solitaire games, were developed by Oberon Media, creators of Dream Vacation Solitaire and Tri-Peaks Solitaire To Go, as well as numerous other casual games.

Read Long Zheng’s complete article.