Introduction

Freecell for PS2 Yabasic is a solitaire card game for PlayStation 2 Yabasic. The game has been designed especially for PlayStation 2 hardware, but you can also run it on a MS-Windows system with the Yabasic emulator.

Freecell for PS2 Yabasic is my version of the all too known freecell card game. Having moved away from MS-Windows several years ago, I had not played this classic game for years and I wanted to try it on my PlayStation 2. So, I programmed the Freecell for PS2 Yabasic on my spare time. I had fun programming the game and spent many nights playing it too. I hope that you too find the game interesting.

Features

The main features:

• Multi-level undo: try different solutions and return to the previous situation by repeatedly undoing you moves, should the moves fail to produce satisfactory results.
• Scenarios: continue or re-play challenging games later. You can also find interesting scenarios from this very web page and try to solve those in your own PlayStation 2.
• Extra challenge: the computer counts each move you make. For an extra challenge, re-play a scenario and see if you can find a solution with less moves. The fewer moves it takes to solve a scenario, the more intelligent the solution.
• Peek cards: if you cannot see the suit of an obscured card, move the cursor over the card and press End (Circle) to lift the card a bit to see the suit. By knowing the obscured cards you can plan your moves more carefully.
• Automated moves: at the end of the game when most of your cards are arranged to piles, press and hold Del (Cross) to automatically move the next matching cards to a foundation pile. This reduces the effort at the end of the game as you do not need to waste time on obvious moves.

Try Freecell for PS2 Yabasic today! It is free, and does not require you to have a genuine PlayStation 2 to play.

Download & Install Freecell

Freecell for PS2 Yabasic requires PS2 Yabasic Emulator so be sure to install it first.

Download Freecell 1.6 installation package

Unzip the above package and copy the the freecell.txt file to your desktop, for example. Start the Yabasic emulator by double clicking the ps2yabasic icon on your desktop and choose open from the file menu. Find the freecell.txt file and click OK. To start Freecell, press the large triangle button on the toolbar. From the main menu, select new game to play a random scenario.

Playing Freecell

Controls

Freecell for PS2 Yabasic has been designed for the Playstation DualShock-2 controller, but you can play the game with keyboard when using the emulator. The following table summarizes the controls for both the PS2 and the emulator.

PS2	Emulator	Function
Arrows	Arrows	Select card.
Cross	Del	Move card to nearest matching space or pile.
R1	Caps	Repeat move to select next matching pile.
Circle	End	Peek card to see the suit of an obscured card.
Square	Ins	Undo previous move.
Start	PgDn	Access in-game menu.

Help on controller buttons is also available from the in-game menu. Press PgDn (Start) during the game to access this menu.

During game, press Del (Cross) to move the selected card to the nearest available free space/pile. If you are not happy with the location of the card, press Caps (R1) to move the very same card to next matching free space or pile. Repeated moves are not included in the total number of moves.

Several cards may be moved at once if there are enough free cells or tableau piles available to move the cards one by one. However, existing tableu piles are not considered when moving a blocks of cards in a such way. Hence, you may want to see if you can split a block of cards in to two pieces if you wish to move a large number of cards from one pile to another.

Scenarios

Scenario in Freecell for PS2 Yabasic is a fixed arrangement of cards. Using scenarios, you can re-play some tricky deal in order to solve the deal with fewer moves, or you can continue a deal that you did not complete last time.

To create a new scenario, select new game from the main menu and a random scenario will be generated for you. The name of the scenario will appear in the lower right corner of the screen. Make note of this name if you wish to re-play a scenario later.

To play a named scenario, select SCENARIO from the main menu and the screen in figure 2 will appear. Move the cursor left and right using the direction buttons to select the letter to change or to operate the buttons. Rotate the letters using either up/down buttons or Del (Cross) and Ins (Square) buttons. Once the scenario name is shown on screen, move the cursor over the OK button and press Del (Cross) to play the scenario.

There are thousands of scenarios to play. The following table lists some interesting scenarios in the order of increasing difficulty:

Scenario	Moves	Scenario	Moves	Scenario	Moves	Scenario	Moves
AMULET	86	PUZZLE	97	ENRUTH	102	FUNAKI	109
BIRESU	89	TAXCUT	98	JOANNE	102	WINDOW	111
OMSEPI	91	TCEECF	98	IELFEE	103	RUANDA	111
QANTAS	91	VNJFDG	99	BAKAME	104	JUNIOR	115
SXNVPE	92	POTION	99	LINGER	104	GARLIC	118
HUMANE	93	JERIKO	100	AWCZEE	104	TOPPLE	124
JULIET	95	GREECE	100	FPCYMD	106	FOXLET	126
FLARES	96	YANKIE	101	BITBOY	106	ANDREA	127
MDVPSU	96	CLOCKS	101	DOODLE	108
YHZESN	97	LONDON	101	BADBOY	108

Freecell is an easy game and almost every scenario can be solved by carefully exchanging cards.

Rules

Cards in Freecell are organized in to eight tableau piles (T), four foundation piles (A) and four free cells (C), as shown in figure 3. At the beginning of the game a deck of cards is dealt in to the eight tableau piles. The objective of the game is to move the cards from tableau piles to the four foundation piles at the upper right corner. The cards in foundation piles must be built in suit from ace to king (A-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-J-Q-K).

To move cards in to the foundation piles, you must use tableau piles and free cells to you rearrange the cards. However, only a single card can be placed to a free cell at one time. Moreover, a card can be placed on the top of a tableau pile if only the card extends a sequence of altering color and decreasing value.

Only the exposed cards are available for play. However, blocks of cards can be moved at once if there are enough free cells or tableau spaces available to move the cards one by one.

Credits

Programming by Toni Rönkkö. Thanks to Luis Pedro Coelho for providing the images of jacks, kings and queens. Thanks to Mika Matjussi and Jarmo Ruotsalainen for testing.