Video card game
A video card game is a genre of video game which primarily uses cards or tiles as pieces. This includes the conversion of traditional and modern card games and tile games into video games, as well as games that could only exist as video games, but use cards or tiles.
There is some debate as to whether tile games (like mahjong and dominoes) should be grouped with card games, but I treat them the same since they typically have very similar rules and function in a similar role as card games, e.g.: gambling, solitaire, etc. In my view, most tile games would be called card games if the tile were simply thinner.
Contents
Personal
As a child, I was taught how to play a variety of card games by my mother and grandparents, and, growing up with video games at the same time, it was natural for them to intermingle. However, though I have played a variety of video card games, I typically prefer genuine cards, not just for the feel and ease of manipulation, but because I prefer to play with real humans over AIs.
The first video card game I remember playing is Microsoft's Solitaire for Windows 3 around 1990 at my cousin Brian's house. Not long after that, I convinced my family to buy our own computer which also came with Windows 3, and my own copy of Solitaire, as well as Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows which included Cruel, Golf. It also included Taipei, my first experience with a mahjong game of any kind. Over the next few years I played a variety of other card games, most of them belonging to the Microsoft Entertainment Packs, and, because of this, I associated card games with the Windows operating system, not DOS, and certainly not video game consoles. I knew card games were made on consoles, but I couldn't imagine myself every buying one.
In middle school, several of my friends started playing Magic: The Gathering, so I began playing the game as well, which ultimately led me to buy the video game version of it, which I really loved. In my early 40s, I got back into mahjong solitaire and began playing through a lot of the old games in the Shanghai series.
History
The first video game cards were made as text-only interpretations on mainframes with titles like 1620 Blackjack Demonstration (1962), Bridge (1970), Acey Deucy (1973), and Four Suit Stack Solitaire (1974). When the PLATO computer system started becoming popular, fully graphical card games were made like Blackjack (1974), Concentration (1974), Solitaire (1977), and Mah-Jongg (1983). However, all of these games were made for business and educational computers that most people didn't have access to. Graphical card and tile games wouldn't be introduced to home consumers until the late 1970s on the first home video game consoles and microcomputers.
Games
This is a list of video card games that are important to me. For all games in this genre, see the category.
| Title | Released | Developer |
|---|---|---|
| FreeCell | 1991-??-?? | Microsoft |
| Magic: The Gathering | 1997-03-06 | MicroProse Software |
| Shanghai | 1986-07-?? | Activision |
| Solitaire | 1990-05-22 | Microsoft |
| Spider | 1998-06-25 | Microsoft |
| Taipei | 1988-??-?? | Microsoft |
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