Fortythieves

Forty Thieves is a shareware Macintosh solitaire card game by Eric Snider, released in 1990 and later updated through version 2.1.2. The game features both black-and-white and color graphics, with two card sizes designed for the original 9-inch Mac screen and for larger external monitors.

Gameplay

Forty Thieves is a classic two-deck solitaire variant in which the player attempts to build all 104 cards onto eight foundation piles. The Macintosh implementation packages this notoriously difficult patience game with point-and-click card movement and the visual flourishes typical of early Mac shareware.

Author and origin

The game was distributed by Eric Snider, with this Info-Mac upload (version 2.1, July 1992) submitted by Daniel K. Appelquist of Carnegie Mellon University. The author's own description self-deprecatingly notes its "spectacular graphics (ahem)" alongside its color and small-screen support.

System requirements

Per Macintosh Garden, Forty Thieves runs on 68k Macintoshes from System 1 through System 5 and is also compatible with Mac OS 9. It works in modern emulators such as Mini vMac, Basilisk II, and SheepShaver.

Versions

The Macintosh Garden listing tracks four releases of the title: 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.1.2. The Info-Mac archive copy (forty-thieves-21.hqx) corresponds to the 2.1 release dated 24 July 1992.