Super Solitaire

Super Solitaire

SNES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Beam Software Publisher Pack-In-Video Published 1995-06-23 Platforms SNES Genres Cards, Casual puzzle, Passive puzzle, Puzzle, Single-screen Themes Erotic Distribution Commercial

Super Solitaire is a puzzle video game compilation of 12 different solitaire card games developed by Beam Software and published by Pack-In-Video for the SNES on 1995-06-23. The Japanese original uses suggestive anime women for backgrounds, giving it more of a PG-13 vibe, but all of that was removed for the family-friendly English release.

The game faithfully implements solitaire versions of: Klondike, FreeCell, Golf, Cruel, Pyramid, Stonewall, Dozen't Matter, Aces Up, Florentine, Poker, Canfield, and Scorpion. Some have optional rules which can be adjusted.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. All games
Finished	2023-08-27.

While searching through the SNES library, I saw Super Solitaire and was curious to see how solitaire was implemented in the SNES era. I was surprised to see how many different games were included and began playing through each of them. I was familiar with the first five types, and had already beat versions of them in the past, so they weren't too difficult (though Golf and Pyramid took quite a while to beat, as they often do). After that, I began playing forms that were new to me. I especially liked Stonewall, which is kind of a mix between Freecell and Klondike, while Aces Up, Florentine, and Scorpion all took a while. I beat all of the games (excluding Poker, which can't be beaten). While researching for this page, I discovered the original Japanese game didn't have the same family-friendly theme.

Review

5	5	4	4	7

Best Version: SNES

Good

• Having such a wide variety of solitaire games in a single title is quite impressive. If this were made for a mobile platform, it probably would have been even more enjoyable.
• You can get the random seed value in the form of a password so you can challenge your friends to beat a specific shuffle order in any game.
• The options of easy-listening music by Marshall Parker are quite fitting.
• The game features a Tournament Mode which lets you specify several games and gives you a total score afterward.
• The game lets player use the SNES Mouse if they have one.
• Despite the European release being scrapped, the game is still available in five languages.

Bad

• None of the games adjust the appearance of the deck height to give you an idea how many cards are left. This is an important piece of information from the real game that is lost in this rendition.
• The graphics aren't that great for several reasons:
  • The cards are easy-enough to distinguish, but the low resolution of the SNES makes them pretty clunky looking, especially for 1995 when many home computer games were running in higher resolution. Since the game didn't need any intensive animation, it should have been made in the SNES's high-res mode.
  • The US backgrounds look like clip art, some especially poor, while the Japanese original uses suggestive anime girls for most of its backgrounds, which, although better-drawn, makes the game far less appropriate for women or children.
  • While you can change the card backs, I didn't find any of them very appealing.
  • The victory and game over screens are the exact same for every game which is dull. The US version uses nearly identical art for each, which is even more boring.
• I don't like how the A button opens the menu and the X button selects the deck. This is not an intuitive layout as it is different from nearly all other SNES games.
• The audio leaves much to be desired:
  • All of the sound effects options are bad. The default has an annoying buzzer every time you click incorrectly and the others are even worse.
  • While the music is pretty good and fitting, I don't love any of songs. Also, I would prefer if they were longer, as they get repetitive quickly, and I expected more songs. Three songs for an SNES game is pretty underwhelming.
• The game borrows the dollar value aspect of the "Vegas mode" from previous interpretations of Klondike and applies it to every game. However, since most solitaire games allow the player to process far more cards, you quickly amass a huge sum of money. The game strangely caps you at $7,999, but none of this matters, as the game doesn't have a save feature, so any collected money is lost the moment you leave the game.
• In Florentine, you can't peak under the cards you've placed. I'm not sure if this is part of the rules, though it seems like it shouldn't be, because it requires to to either memorize or write down all of the cards you've placed in order to know what has been covered, which is annoying.
• In Canfield, cards that can be placed on a foundation are automatically placed, even if it's not to your advantage to do so. This caused me to lose at least one game because of it. I tried turning off the automatic setting, but cards are still moved. I assume the developers made this part of the rules for the game, but I haven't seen any rules for Canfield outside of this game which require the player to do this.
• In Scorpion, when a stack of cards is too long, the game squishes the cards closer together to fit them all on the screen. However, it squishes them so closely, you can't see what they are. A scrolling background would have alleviated this problem.

Ugly

• The game doesn't try to oversell itself, it is titled Super Solitaire after all, but it's nothing more than a collection of solitaire games for a home console. Though I'm sure this appeals to some people, you can get all the same excitement (and more) out of a $1 deck of cards. Though, you don't need to shuffle, which, I guess, is something.

Media

Box Art

• 

  Japan. Has glimpses of the anime girls you'll see in the game.

• 

  USA. Very dull card backs and suit symbols. Yawn.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - Japan.

• 

  Manual - USA.

Videos

Japan - Game play - Klondike and Cruel.

USA - Game play - Freecell.

Play Online

SNES (Europe), SNES (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	The Japanese original has women, but they're for decoration.
Bechdel test?	Fail	In the Japanese version, a bikini-clad elfin woman says "Congratulations," but that's it.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	The Japanese original has anime characters of several ethnicities, but none are strong.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no clearly queer characters.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Super Solitaire
Japanese	トランプアイランド	Toranpu Airando	Trump Island

Links