Since the long-gone dawn of Windows 3.1, Microsoft bundled Minesweeper – a game that everybody knows about and sort of knows how to play, but nobody is really good at – with Windows. The Windows version of the game remained basically unchanged right through Windows XP, except that with the release of Windows 2000, the beginner level was enlarged from 8×8 to 9×9.
Among the notable features of this version of Minesweeper were the charming “smiley face” button at the top of the screen (he would scowl if you lost, and clicking him would start a new game.) Also, you could cheat: if you typed “xyzzy” and then pressed Shift+Enter, hovering over a mine would cause the upper left-hand pixel of your monitor to turn black. Hovering over a non-mine square would turn the pixel white.
Sadly, however, this version of everybody’s favorite game is now gone forever. For Windows Vista, Microsoft got an independent game developer, Oberon Games, to create a new version. Gone is the smiley face; gone is the cheat mode. Gone forever are the cool 16-bit graphics that haunted the game from Windows 95 onward. Worst of all, you can now cheat in a perfectly legal way: because you can save your game and start over, people just click on a mine, take a screenshot, and then start from the saved point, using the screenshot as a reference as to which squares are mines. Farewell, Minesweeper. You will be missed.
