A Macintosh card game should fool you into believing that you are directly manipulating cards. In addition, the only reason, really, that anyone plays solitaire is to waste time: It’s not like there’s a computer opponent to overcome. So the ultimate solitaire game will pull you in with an excellent interface and make you forget that time is passing in the outside world.
Eric’s Ultimate Solitaire does just that. The cards feel like cards. You can pick them up and “throw” them at the target pile. When you finish a game, Eric deals you a new one, so there’s no reason to get up and take a break. The game satisfies the minimum Solitaire requirements, yet it does so much more. The CD delivers more backgrounds and, with the QuickTime Musical Instruments extension installed, more music than you’d get on a floppy. You’d have to play for several hours before the backgrounds or music would repeat, and if you have your own favorite background or MIDI file, just plug it in.
As far as the playing goes, you can choose from 23 different solitaire varieties. This, again, reflects the incredible attention paid to interface design — 23 is the number of items that fits on a pull-down menu of a 640-x-480-pixel monitor without scrolling. The solitaire varieties were also chosen to challenge you — you’ll need skill, not luck, to win. Each variation has its own card design, which reflects the game title, and there are special “Easter egg” card backs for holidays, too. Playable cards can be darkened so you know when you’re stuck. When you get too stuck, Eric lets you cheat by moving a card to the top of the stack. Alternately, you can make Eric deal “always winnable” games.
To help you keep track of just how much time you’ve wasted, Eric keeps statistics of each game’s score, average game length, and your winning and losing streaks. Cheats and undos are tracked, too, unfortunately. Eric’s mascot, a weasel, comments on the results of each game, encouraging you when you break a losing streak or set a record, congratulating you on a long winning streak (“Your self-esteem must be fantastic”), or castigating you when you cheat. And if you get bored, you can look for secret messages in the manual and resource fork.
Tafel, Kathy. (September 1997). Solitaire Spotlight. MacAddict. (pg. 76).
Delta Tao Software
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
85 / 
2020-09-11 / 
6b70631ff738f0c3479032eba74dddb0df7bf5e3 / 
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Ultimate_CD.sit
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