Hours of Solitaire
Solebon Solitaire (http://www.solebon.com) has been my favorite game since buying my first HandSpring Visor, a PalmOS device. Another long-time favorite is Shanghai Mahjong Solitaire (http://www.mobileage.com/shanghai/). These games exist on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. Simple, elegant, and quick to play when I have a few minutes, these games are the essence of "casual" gaming. Our Nintendo DS cartridge collection also includes solitaire, mahjong tiles, crosswords, word searches, and other puzzle games.
I read about children (and adults) enjoying Minecraft, HALO, Call of Duty, SecondLife, and other complex games. Personally, I don't have the patience to invest hours, days, or weeks in a game or virtual simulation. My ideal games are those that I can start and stop, or that last only a few minutes per level.
Give me solitaire games, pinball, puzzles, and simple arcade classics.
I don't want to shoot people or aliens. I don't want to memorize dozens of controls. The fewer controls, the better, and the less reliant on quick (accurate) reflexes, the better still. That's probably why I play Solebon and Shanghai frequently; there are timers and points, but I don't play for speed or high scores. Even when I play pinball, it is to study the patterns and tricks of the tables.
My favorite "arcade" games remain Tetris, Columns, Collapse, and Luxor. Pipe Dream was a great game, too. Yes, speed is involved, but these are primarily puzzles to solve. For arcade shooters, I still turn to variations of Space Invaders, including Galaga, Galaxian, Gorf, Gyruss, and similar classics. Even Asteroids (the vector-based original) is good for a few minutes.
Solitaire on Windows was probably the most brilliant thing to include with an operating system. How many of us wasted hours with the original version? Microsoft kindly added Free Cell, Spider, and Hearts later. Though I'm not a Windows user anymore, those were my go-to diversions when I had to wait for a printer or a large download to complete. Minesweeper isn't a bad little puzzle game, either.
Apple includes chess with OS X. Not that I don't enjoy chess, but it isn't exactly a quick and easy game when you have five minutes to kill. I've wondered by Apple didn't include a handful of casual games. When Freeverse, a storied Mac developer, failed, I hoped Apple would buy the rights to their classic board and puzzle games. No such luck.
I had played more than 600 hands of Klondike on my last Palm device. That's a lot of solitaire. I'm sure many of us have played thousands of hands on computers, phones, and tablets.
Do you have any favorite games? Why are those your favorites?
I read about children (and adults) enjoying Minecraft, HALO, Call of Duty, SecondLife, and other complex games. Personally, I don't have the patience to invest hours, days, or weeks in a game or virtual simulation. My ideal games are those that I can start and stop, or that last only a few minutes per level.
Give me solitaire games, pinball, puzzles, and simple arcade classics.
I don't want to shoot people or aliens. I don't want to memorize dozens of controls. The fewer controls, the better, and the less reliant on quick (accurate) reflexes, the better still. That's probably why I play Solebon and Shanghai frequently; there are timers and points, but I don't play for speed or high scores. Even when I play pinball, it is to study the patterns and tricks of the tables.
My favorite "arcade" games remain Tetris, Columns, Collapse, and Luxor. Pipe Dream was a great game, too. Yes, speed is involved, but these are primarily puzzles to solve. For arcade shooters, I still turn to variations of Space Invaders, including Galaga, Galaxian, Gorf, Gyruss, and similar classics. Even Asteroids (the vector-based original) is good for a few minutes.
Solitaire on Windows was probably the most brilliant thing to include with an operating system. How many of us wasted hours with the original version? Microsoft kindly added Free Cell, Spider, and Hearts later. Though I'm not a Windows user anymore, those were my go-to diversions when I had to wait for a printer or a large download to complete. Minesweeper isn't a bad little puzzle game, either.
Apple includes chess with OS X. Not that I don't enjoy chess, but it isn't exactly a quick and easy game when you have five minutes to kill. I've wondered by Apple didn't include a handful of casual games. When Freeverse, a storied Mac developer, failed, I hoped Apple would buy the rights to their classic board and puzzle games. No such luck.
I had played more than 600 hands of Klondike on my last Palm device. That's a lot of solitaire. I'm sure many of us have played thousands of hands on computers, phones, and tablets.
Do you have any favorite games? Why are those your favorites?
I love Solitaire and Spider Solitaire. I recently got a Wii... but I don't like the more complex games either. My favorite games on Wii are based on games I already know in real life, like bowling or darts.
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