Spider, Minesweeper, and Hearts—these longtime staples of Windows (plus other familiar titles, from Solitaire to Freecell) have been missing in action since the launch of Windows 8 in 2012. Sure, you can find versions of these games in the Microsoft Store, but they're cluttered with ads and generally don't feel as good to play as the classic iterations so many of us remember. But there's a way to get the OG time-wasters back.
It's not even particularly hard to do: An installer built by Winaero—a long running website that offers all kinds of system tweaking tools—makes it easy to get these classic games running on computers operating with Windows 8, 10, or 11. The games are slightly tweaked to look better on higher resolution displays, but are otherwise identical to the originals. The games included are Chess, FreeCell, Hearts, Mahjong, Minesweeper, Purble Place, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire. (There's even support for installing the 2000s-era “Internet Games” collection, though given Microsoft shut down the server ages ago, I'm not sure why you'd bother.)
Just download and run the installer, and you can choose which games you want to install.
Credit: Justin Pot
After running the installer you can find everything you selected in the start menu by either searching for a specific title, or opening the All tab and scrolling to the newly added Games folder.
What do you think so far?
Credit: Justin Pot
The games play exactly as you remember, with the Windows 7 aesthetic intact. There are no ads, no prompts to try more games, and no online leaderboards—just a few simple games you can play on your computer to give your brain a rest between tasks. Put simply: these are the best versions of these games Microsoft has ever released. It's nice to see them again.
There's one hangup worth noting: The games may stop working after major Windows updates. When this happens, you'll need to run the installer again—that's per the developer. Do that, and the games will be working again in no time.
