Original Release: Sierra, 1990, PC
A collection of nothing but solitaire games.
Hoyle’s Book of Games 2 (PC, Sierra, 1990)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: DOS Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Hoyle Book 1 featured Sierra characters who would chat with you if you left the game sitting idle for a minute. Hoyle Book 2 thus takes a bit of a mindboggling thematic turn. It not only drops all the characters, it also drops any sort of multiple player aspect altogether, being nothing more than a huge collection of variants of solitaire!
The original Windows 3.0 came out right around when this did and was the one that first included solitaire, so I wonder if the popularity of it there didn’t cause Sierra to misread the market as being seriously hungry for as much solitaire as they could get. I dunno. Anyway, it’s over 20 solitaire variants with different rule sets, but they all seem to play kind of samey to my amateur eye.
The game is competently executed, it’s just … a whole pile of nothing but solitaire.
Videos