Montana

Montana is a Macintosh implementation of the classic solitaire card game of the same name, in which the four Aces are removed and the player attempts to arrange the remaining cards into four ordered suit rows by sliding them into the gaps left behind. Released in 1992 as part of the GAMER distribution, this version targets System 6 and 7 on 68k Macs.

Gameplay

The board is dealt as four rows of thirteen cards. Removing the Aces creates four gaps; the player may move into a gap only the card that follows in suit and rank the card to its left. The aim is to build each row from Two through King in a single suit before the limited number of redeals is exhausted.

Origins as a Solitaire Variant

Montana, also known as Gaps or Spaces, is a long-standing solo card game whose appeal lies in pure tactics: there is no hidden information after the deal, so success depends entirely on planning the order in which gaps are filled before the rows lock up.

Macintosh Implementation

Distributed on Info-Mac as montana-21.hqx, the game was contributed by Ken Hancock and runs as a small black-and-white application suitable for compact Macs of the era. It is part of the wider GAMER suite of card games for the classic Mac.

Preservation Notes

The Info-Mac BinHex header credits the upload to Ken Hancock at world.std.com and dates the build to the early 1990s. Macintosh Garden mirrors a copy under the developer name Eric Snider with a single archived screenshot.