The Windows desktop classics, playable in your browser

These are the games people actually played on Windows — not because they were the best available, but because they were already there. Solitaire shipped with Windows 3.0 in 1990 to teach people how to drag with a mouse. Minesweeper taught the left and right click. FreeCell was in a 32-bit demo pack. None of them were meant to be the reason you turned the computer on, and for a great many people they were.

Microsoft has never released any of them, and the original binaries are not redistributable. So most of this page is not emulation — it is reimplementation: the rules rebuilt from scratch, in JavaScript, as original code. That is why they load instantly instead of booting an emulator, and why they work properly on a phone.

Where to start

3D Pinball Space Cadet — The one worth loading first. It is the full table — flippers, ranks, missions — and it is the only build anywhere that needs no Microsoft files at all.
Solitaire (Klondike) — Klondike, draw one or draw three, with the card movement that made the original feel good to use rather than merely playable.
Minesweeper — All three standard board sizes, and the chording click that experienced players rely on and most browser clones forget.
SkiFree — The actual 1991 program, not a rebuild. And yes, the Yeti is still in it, and still cannot be outrun.
JezzBall — The one from the Windows Entertainment Pack that nobody can name and everybody recognises within about four seconds of seeing it.

What's a rebuild and what's the real thing

We think the distinction matters, so here it is explicitly. Solitaire, FreeCell, Spider Solitaire, Hearts, Minesweeper, JezzBall and Rodent's Revenge are original implementations written for this site. They follow the original rules — including the parts people remember, like Spider's suit selection and Hearts' shoot-the-moon — but no Microsoft code or artwork is involved in any of them.

SkiFree is the genuine 1991 binary by Chris Pirih, running under Wine in WebAssembly, because Pirih has long made it freely available. 3D Pinball Space Cadet is the open-source SpaceCadetPinball engine paired with a data file we rebuilt from scratch and released into the public domain — the original PINBALL.DAT is Microsoft's, so it needed replacing rather than copying. There is a write-up of how that was done.

They remember where you left off

Every game on this page saves automatically. Close the tab mid-hand and the same hand is waiting when you come back — the resume card even shows a picture of the screen you left on. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; it is all browser storage on your own machine, and there is a saves page where you can see and clear it.

Other categories: Classic shooters · Side-scrolling platformers · The Windows desktop classics · Card games · every game and guide

Frequently asked questions

Are these the real Windows games?

SkiFree is the original 1991 binary. 3D Pinball is the open-source engine with public-domain data we built to replace Microsoft's. The card and puzzle games are original reimplementations of the rules — Microsoft has never released the originals for redistribution, so copying them was never an option.

Do they work on a phone?

Yes. Because most of them are ordinary JavaScript rather than an emulated program, they load fast and respond to taps the way any web page does. That is the practical upside of rebuilding rather than emulating.

Is there any catch — ads, accounts, downloads?

No account, no download, and nothing to install. Click a title and it runs in the tab.