Apple re-releases Texas Hold’em ahead of App Store’s 11th anniversary

Apple’s App Store will celebrate its 11th anniversary later this week, but the company says it’s celebrating the Store’s 10th year by re-releasing a classic iPod and iPhone app: Texas Hold’em (via 9to5Mac). Based on the globally popular poker game, the app gives players the chance to gamble fake money in 10 casino settings — including an Apple garage with classic iMac and iPod posters — for the first time, at zero cost to users.

The original $5 Apple version of Texas Hold’em launched for the fifth-generation iPod in September 2006 before arriving on the iPhone and iPod touch in July 2008, an oddity in that Apple rarely developed its own mobile games. Surprisingly little has changed from the game’s prior releases to the re-release: Apple has reformatted the app to look better on tall, Retina displays, but preserved most of the same background themes, digitized characters, and music from before — albeit with “new characters” and “more challenging gameplay.” The game can be played in portrait or landscape orientations.