OrangeOctangular, Soothsayer of Sour Sausages If you search hard enough trough his videos... you will find his age, to cut your research by 100%, I tell you he is 28 years old
Fun fact: here in italy, Minesweeper was censored. Yes, censored. Starting with Windows ME, all italian language copies of Windows came with "Flower Garden", which was Minesweeper with flowers instead of mines (and which later became an optional skin for everybody else). The reason for this was likely the mid-90s Bosnia war, when we'd hear news of children mutilated by landmines coming from across the narrow sea on a daily basis, and which left people very sensitive to the topic, prompting Microsoft to do some damage prevention to dodge controversy.
Typical: cover up the problem instead of helping to solve it. I am from one of Bosnia neighbor country and serbs left mines here too and now they are acting like nothing ever happened, always avoiding talking openly about the shit they did in the war. And thats not helping to solve the problem, or remove the mines that are still left...
The Windows store version of minesweeper is very good, and it even has hard modes... Minesweeper is far from Dead. (however it lacks the original sounds from vista, like mahjong and solitaire do. Vista versions had by far the best games)
Lazy Game Reviews It's actually *much* easier than you made it sound, LGR. If you have the right number of flags around a numbered cell , click that cell with both buttons. This will instantly reveal the rest of the surrounding cells.
This stuff is so amazing. Please keep up these in-depth histories of games! I love learning about these games/tech that are so innocuous or taken for granted.
***** LGR is awesome because he is the only UA-camr that gets thousands of views and has personally responded to my questions and comments on youtube and twitter.
Haha I remember when we were kids me and my friends didn't know how it was played, we just randomly clicked squares until we went poof. Until a programming teacher saw us play during our class and taught us how it is really played. Instantly some of us became lifelong fans, me included.
I think this introduction to the game specifically increases it's reverence. I am same. I didn't have teacher show me, but someone showed me, I am not necessarily a fan, but I always had a sort of respect for it since I learned how it really plays.
Webberjo I click randomly until I have two large cleared areas...makes for faster times. Yes, about half the time a mine is hit before the second area reveals itself, but the time advantage is worth it when it happens.
Vara Mepresia lol yeah, as a kid I honestly had no idea how it worked, and nobody explained it, it basically had all the appeal of the calculator program.
Are we serious here? I played it all the time! Is this the norm? Am I the odd one for spending so much time on this game and knowing everything in this vid and more?
holnrew Click both the right and left buttons on a number to clear all the adiacent non-flagged spaces. It's only possible if you already flagged the indicated number of spaces.
It was very frustrating to have cleared nearly the entire board to come to one last area only to find out that you had no option but to guess, sometimes more than once.
I love Minesweeper. I play Simon Tatham's version, it's a copy of the Windows one, but generates games that are guaranteed to never need you to guess. I played a 70x140 games with 2021 mines (expert density) and it took me 114 minutes. Great fun.
As always, another great video. Minesweeper is such a classic time-waster. It was also one of the first games I wrote in my spare time. I wrote it for my graphing calculator during class in high school, then I ported it to windows. I took a slightly different approach and wrote algorithms to work with many different tessellations. It could work with squares, triangles, pentagons, mixed shapes, etc. with different adjacent edges..
just like a musical chord consists of several notes played unison in a single stroke, chording is clearing all "safe" (unflagged) squares around a number with a single click. That is to avoid clicking more than once and clear them all in a single "move".
Like David says it is a move that can both save time and is also safer because you can't missclick. Well unless you missclick the number when you chord, then you are really screwed I guess :P Also I've been doing chording for years I never knew it had a name before today.
No it's not it's so simple.. chess is hard, go is hard, this is not even close to hard, the logic really IS simple it's just a matter of how fast you can do it
@@Manas-co8wl What? Chess is easy. The rules are pretty clear. With minesweeper, it's like a drunk teacher trying to explain quantum physics to a toddler.
Also worth mentioning as part of the game's strange history is the International Campaign To Ban Winmine, an Italian group that considered the game offensive to, you know, actual landmine victims. Microsoft eventually responded by replacing Minesweeper in Italian copies of Windows 2000 onwards with "Prato Fiorito", a reskinned version that replaces mines with flowers. You can see this briefly in the Vista footage in the video, where it was an alternative game mode in all regions.
Here's a blog post a Microsoft developer wrote back in the day about the slings and arrows of releasing the Vista version of Minesweeper without offending anyone: web.archive.org/web/20080119193217/shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/09/26/The-UI-design-minefield-_2D00_-er_2E002E002E00_-flower-field_3F003F00_.aspx
My best friend is amazing at minesweeper, she can play on the largest grid and hardest levels and win almost every time plus she barely takes half a second to click on a tile. It just blows my mind.
Minesweeper IS casual because, barring cheats and glitches, it's possible to make no mistakes and still completely fail, or have to chose by random purely due to RNG and not because of actual skill or effort.
Yeah I can tell you guys are minesweeper veterans :P It is why I don't play it as much these days, beating that damn board with logic and probability and knowledge only to end up with two fucking mines in a corner and I have to take a 50-50 chance.
Out of curiosity, is Minesweeper and Picross essentially the same game? We had minesweeper on the old windows 3.1 computers at my school, but I never learnt the rules, so found it a confusing mess. But I got incredibly addicted to Picross on the DS when it first game out. But they just look so familiar now.
Mmm, I know what you mean, but not really. The logic that's used is pretty different. IMO picross plays a lot more like Sudoku than minesweeper...plus you can make a mistake without your board blowing up.
You must have gone to a posh school Larry. All my school had was BBC Micro's and Acorns up until I left in 95. I tell a lie, they had Atari ST's in the music room.
Daniel Vickers Oh, we had BBC Micros, but they had been relegated to a recreation room to play games on, until someone found it funny to pour hot chocolate down the back of one. You could see visions of Hell on the screen.
They're pretty much the opposite game. In Picross, your goal is to REVEAL all the hidden tiles instead of avoiding them, and the clues for them are given you at the start. Plus, there's no such thing as an automated clear of empty tiles, since the concept of the game makes YOU the one who needs to figure out which ones are empty.
I am logically inclined, that's why I don't mind Minesweeper. Cause you have to guess. Not only in the beginning, but (even worse) at any point in the game you might be forced to make a guess. And after solving 98 mines having to guess the last one is not very rewarding.
I completely agree. Especially when logic says that the last mine is in one of these two adjacent squares. As for the rest of the game, it is 100% my fault because I have just made an illogical move. With some initial random clicks, my best ever time was 59 seconds. My usual 'good' time is around 3 minutes.
I got deep into sweeping in the early 2000's. This is bringing back a lot of nostalgia... 2, 21 and 81 were my beginner, intermediate and expert times. Nowhere near record breaking, but took over 3 years to get that quick. Also, hurts to see random guessing in the video when a clear logical choice was available...
Doctor Whouse bruh I got addicted to it after playing it in a boring class. Now anytime I play it I have to do custom bc the hardest level is never enough
I’m really into minesweeper, especially playing the easy mode because it’s the most competitive one, it’s really quick also so I did it thousands of times. my record is 6sec
another entertaining and well-written video!!! appreciate all the research you put into things like this -- in this case something millions of people played but most never thought twice about
Now, in 2019, most "casual" games to ever come bundled with Windows are free to download on Microsoft Store. They're all squeaky clean UWP apps with more Xbox Live integration than necessary, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that they can run unmodified on Xbox One. I wish, though, that Purble Place and 3D Pinball Space Cadet also got the UWP treatment. At least the binaries from XP and Vista still run on 10.
You learn something new everyday. It's 2017 and I never knew these techniques existed. I've played minesweeper over the years and had it on many p c back in the day but was always just casual to it and thank you for this amazing video:)
Only if you don't keep the Store up to date. Mine's always ready to go. I use a Surface though, so I'm in there often to keep things up to date. The new Minesweeper "app" is fun, but a serious resource hog. It makes the fan on the i5 SP4 go full speed, and on my i7 OC'ed desktop, adventure mode is very laggy and buggy. :(
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for letting me know about this. I had no idea there was so much sophistication to Minesweeper, but I always loved this game. I am so glad to know that it wasn't just me, but that this is a for real thing to be taken seriously. Thank. You. So. Much.
ps: have you tough on doing a Paint compilation about all the versions MS paint had? altough prettymuch paint has die with a horrible not fully pixelated brush since xp, its still worth remenbering all the versions, expecially that 98 classic)
I've heard once that this game, and many other standard Windows games, are actually secret tutorials for using a mouse. Also, chording can now be done by middle clicking.
Νot really "secret" tutorials, lol. It's not like they were trying to hide their purpose. They were just simple tutorials in game form made to teach people how to use a mouse. Similar to how you have Miss Mavis teaches typing, which is a game which teaches touch typing on the keyboard
Clint, Your videos are the shit! You are one of my favorite if not by far my favorite channel... just wanted to give you props, cause im excited about every one of your videos!!! :D
I hate the extent to which Microsoft bloated up Minesweeper and Solitaire from Windows 8 onwards. It's ridiculous. Fair enough, by all means make them look and sound a bit nicer (Windows 7) but making it into a full-screen "app" with relatively long loading times, ads, online connectivity, daily challenges etc. was taking things too far and should have been reserved for a separate version. The sense of "casualness" has been diminished significantly. And don't get me started on what they did to the calculator in Windows 10 :| There are some complete nutcases at Redmond.
I used to play this game at work when I was an intern and worked my way up to intermediate difficulty. Fastest time was 40 seconds. Chording is when you use the middle mouse button or left and right together and click on a number where you have flagged all the possible locations of a mine, then the game will use math to determine which squares around the numbers are ok to press and then press them. A one on a corner is always a mine, so flag the box and then use chording on the other numbers around it. If you flag the wrong box and chord a number, you'll strike a mine automatically.
***** They totally should do that, if only for the sake of trolling :) If Call of Duty can artificially raise system requirements to make it look next-gen (aka Ghosts), why shouldn't Microsoft do the same? Next-gen Minesweeper, now with mindblowing graphics, more mines and time counter that only stops at 99999999999 seconds!
I actually used one of those other minesweeper clients for a while. I really liked how I could graph my progress and compare the various statistics (RQI 3BV etc) I got pretty happy with my highscores, though of course not nearly fast enough to enter the true ranks online.
And you sir I a blessed son of Odin. Oh, and you really f'd up letting Logitha go. That chick is smokin. Tell Floki I said what's up. Fuckin love that guy!
I didnt let Lathgertha go, she left me and took my little boy. She will regret it, once Im king of England, you will see. Oh.. and Floki, he didnt even send me an invite to his wedding, can you believe that?! Skol, my friend! ;)
Good grief, LGR, I'm gonna be honest. My favorite game reviewer-types have always been the funny ones, the colorful ones, the guys like JonTron and PBG and ProJared. I subscribe to guys like you generally for here-and-there bursts of amusement and padding in between the releases of 'bigger' reviewers. But as time's gone on, I've seen you continually prove to be one of the most informative and thorough yet succinct reviewers, covering content vastly different than most and in a different way and not only do I always finish the video entertained but very often really feel like I've learned something. And to top it all off, you've got this killer subtle humor -- and then this video, with that Tim and Eric gif just sailing across the screen, you had me on the floor. I might have a new favorite reviewer. (Also, speaking of other reviewers; TicTactics looks like a clone/port of the Atari 2600 3D Tic Tac Toe game Mike Matei just reviewed on Cinemassacre...)
I know right!! This comment section is blowing my mind right now I thought everyone knew how to play Minesweeper! Is it just my country or something? It's not bullshit at all, 5 may be pushing it but I definitely knew how to play this game at the age of ten, ins and outs.
Thanks for reminding me of the game I always played in easy mode. I would some times play in the hardest mode where there was only ONE safe space on the board just so I could click on a mine space and watch the fun chain reaction as the mines blew up in a wave across the board. :D
I recently completed building a windows 7 gaming PC, and I have to say that during my many hours of downloading from steam/origin and installing my old games via disc, Minesweeper was nothing less than a godsend! It's offline as to not slow your downloads, comes pre-installed with Windows, and is strangely addictive.
chording is actually really useful, even a bit of a crutch for me. all i do is chord now, since it the ability to just open up huge amounts of space like that and not have to click squares basically makes it so you never accidently click a square that has a mine when clearing. in addition to this, completely eliminates the need to figure out which squares are safe, i can do a chord n boom all safe squares were revealed. much simpler to only have to look for mines and have to occasionally search for safe squares when a chord isnt possible
Lazy Game Reviews I remember the day my high-school German teacher explained how minesweeper works to me and the other student aid. (Yes, in that period, he had aids.) I always knew there was more to it than just guessing, but I'd never really took enough time to figure it out. Things changed, that day. The simple logic... Oh how good it feels to rule over it!
Even without having put any research into Minesweeper (this is the first time I learned there's a professional scene), I still realized the MS version ... Well, it blows. Hard. In Expert mode, there's pretty much always at the very least two fields which contain one mine, and there's absolutely no way to logically figure out where it actually is. It becomes pure guesswork.
Never understood this game as a kid. Watched this video, got minesweeper for my phone and won for the first time ever today. Now I'm completely addicted. Thanks for that!
You should've talked about the secret difficulty of Minesweeper where if you finish all three difficulties and right-click on the smiley, it would turn red and the field would wrap.
I love Minesweeper at one point in time as a kid I learned how to figure out the pattern, and it was cool clearing a small board eventually I'd move to larger boards until I just got board of it a couple years ago. Still I love it, and its a challenge not many consider
This video actually stirs some really painful memories. Unemployed in 2008, I got seriously addicted to minesweeper, playing the game 5 hours or more every single day. I reached a top 40 UK combined-time ranking as my life unravelled, finally getting my career back on course six months down the line! Don't underestimate the hardcore nature of this game. Symptomatic of wider issues I had but still, probably represents the lowest point in my life!! Fun times
I recently found an old HP 200LX at Goodwill. Nifty find, full DOS computer in a compact handheld. I mention it here because it has a weird little variant of Minesweeper on it called "Hearts and Bones". There's no mouse, so you can't do the "chording" technique, and you can't in fact put the cursor over a square without clearing it, meaning you can only work from a cleared area, and are unable to click on unconnected areas of the grid. You also have to collect hearts spread across the grid to clear the level. You can mark mines by moving to a square next to the mine you want to mark, hitting a mark key, and pressing in the direction of the square. It's not a great version of the game, but it's still very playable. The other game that comes installed is "Lair of the Squid", in which there's a false 3d maze that you travel around in, collecting letters to make a password to leave the level, and there are, for some reason, squids that murder you. Ordered a CF card and a PCMCIA adapter for it, so I'll hopefully be putting some more interesting software onto the machine soon. It's fully DOS compatible, and does CGA graphics, so there's a lot to choose from.
9 років тому
Wow. LGR, the person who can make even Minesweeper to be an interesting subject. Well done.
Speaking of old games like this, has anyone heard of Harry and the Falling Rocks? It was a Windows game back in the day, probably 98 but not certain. I found the prairie dog shooting game, but I can't seem to track this one down. I remember it being a side-on view where the player controlled a head that would dig through the sand, having rocks that would fall if dug directly underneath. The overall color scheme was beige sand, silver stones, and I think a maroon or mauve for Harry himself.
Curious about the techniques I talked about in my Minesweeper video? Check this guy out. DAT CHORDING
ua-cam.com/video/HDUVKUnr0I8/v-deo.html
This is actually fascinating!
LGR, how old are you?
omg i loved this game!!! :) oh memories!!
OrangeOctangular, Soothsayer of Sour Sausages
Clint has always existed. Clint is eternal.......
OrangeOctangular, Soothsayer of Sour Sausages If you search hard enough trough his videos... you will find his age, to cut your research by 100%, I tell you he is 28 years old
Fun fact: here in italy, Minesweeper was censored. Yes, censored. Starting with Windows ME, all italian language copies of Windows came with "Flower Garden", which was Minesweeper with flowers instead of mines (and which later became an optional skin for everybody else).
The reason for this was likely the mid-90s Bosnia war, when we'd hear news of children mutilated by landmines coming from across the narrow sea on a daily basis, and which left people very sensitive to the topic, prompting Microsoft to do some damage prevention to dodge controversy.
ironically censoring a game often causes more controversy
The Flower Garden is briefly shown in the vid.
ua-cam.com/video/ouCe9OTmTUs/v-deo.html
Wow... Human stupidity at its fullest!!
*fun fact*
Typical: cover up the problem instead of helping to solve it. I am from one of Bosnia neighbor country and serbs left mines here too and now they are acting like nothing ever happened, always avoiding talking openly about the shit they did in the war. And thats not helping to solve the problem, or remove the mines that are still left...
5:05 I love how even on the official box they show Minesweeper in front of an Excell sheet. They knew their target audience very well.
Been depressed since windows 8 not having the original games like this. it was sad enough when space cadet pinball was removed
vanherrmann Indeed, even if MS provided Minesweeper through the app store for Win8. Not the same though!
Just download the minesweeper executable online. Its a small file and shouldnt need any extra .dll files to run.
>3D Hover Tank
NEVER FORGET
...also Reversi.
The Windows store version of minesweeper is very good, and it even has hard modes...
Minesweeper is far from Dead.
(however it lacks the original sounds from vista, like mahjong and solitaire do. Vista versions had by far the best games)
I was even more devastated when I discovered that they removed solitaire from Windows 10. The "modern" approach is starting to make me angry.
You lost me at chording.
I lost _myself_ at chording, to be honest.
Lazy Game Reviews Your review of Minesweeper is FAR more entertaining than actually playing the game!
;)
thank god I'm not alone
It sounds like a term for guitar playing. That confused me.
Lazy Game Reviews It's actually *much* easier than you made it sound, LGR. If you have the right number of flags around a numbered cell , click that cell with both buttons. This will instantly reveal the rest of the surrounding cells.
"Still think Minesweeper is a casual waste of time?"
"No, it is a hardcore waste of time".
Nah, UA-cam is a hardcore waste of time.
This stuff is so amazing. Please keep up these in-depth histories of games! I love learning about these games/tech that are so innocuous or taken for granted.
LordMoonstone Certainly, I hope to do many more!
***** LGR is awesome because he is the only UA-camr that gets thousands of views and has personally responded to my questions and comments on youtube and twitter.
Hello, Kirran. How're Sgt. Pepper and Mr. Magoo doing?
Minesweeper was actually made to 'trick' you into learning to use a mouse. Point-and-click. Rather amazing how complex it actually kind of is.
*takes broom from German janitor*
him: MINESWEEPER
beeginey
+10 To Logic
Thanks for the cheap laugh. lol.
Nein OURsweepeer
*MeinSweeper
This is perfection in its purest form.
Instructions unclear. foot is now a bloody stump
Hows it doing?
Put on glasses and you will win anyway
Haha I remember when we were kids me and my friends didn't know how it was played, we just randomly clicked squares until we went poof. Until a programming teacher saw us play during our class and taught us how it is really played. Instantly some of us became lifelong fans, me included.
Minesweeper is amazing
It gets frustrating when you run into squares you HAVE to guess.
@@hengineer yeas tho with some moder remakes there is a setting that makes sure there are ni guesses it is great
I think this introduction to the game specifically increases it's reverence. I am same. I didn't have teacher show me, but someone showed me, I am not necessarily a fan, but I always had a sort of respect for it since I learned how it really plays.
Wait, people really just open up Minesweeper and click randomly? What's the point if you're not even going to try?
Webberjo I click randomly until I have enough to use logic
Webberjo I click randomly until I have two large cleared areas...makes for faster times. Yes, about half the time a mine is hit before the second area reveals itself, but the time advantage is worth it when it happens.
Well, until I was 18 I never bothered to figure out the rules. It was just that game with the numbers and the bombs.
i never figured out a logic to the mines placements. wining was random
Webberjo I don't know how to play it...
Today's kids will never learn to play Minesweeper.
Because neither did we.
"we"？speak for yourself.
and 243 other people
Vara Mepresia lol yeah, as a kid I honestly had no idea how it worked, and nobody explained it, it basically had all the appeal of the calculator program.
Are we serious here? I played it all the time! Is this the norm? Am I the odd one for spending so much time on this game and knowing everything in this vid and more?
I'm a kid. I play it all the time. I managed to beat expert in just 137 seconds best. I have no life.
3D Pinball Space Cadet is the best windows game I have ever played. It's too bad that it's not on Windows Vista and later.
It can still be played on Vista and later though if you copy over the old files :)
ua-cam.com/video/GIKUhvdjAJY/v-deo.html
Eiliv Ulvestad Henschien dl true I miss playing that game at my school we were all addicted to it and I had the high score on all of the computers:p
That's my favorite default windows game too. I like playing it when I have 5 minutes and nothing to do.
yes.
@Lazy Game Reviews I recently copied the old files from my XP backup (I never delete anything) and it works just as in the good old days on Win 10.
Chording broke my brain
i listened to it three times and i still have no idea what is going on
holnrew Click both the right and left buttons on a number to clear all the adiacent non-flagged spaces. It's only possible if you already flagged the indicated number of spaces.
holnrew
It is the simplest way to play the game. The idea of playing without marking flag broke my brain.
Wha?....
His explanation of what chording is broke my brain.
I didn't know Minesweeper was so hardcore.
Real life minesweaper
It was very frustrating to have cleared nearly the entire board to come to one last area only to find out that you had no option but to guess, sometimes more than once.
This video changed my life more than Windows 3.1
Bill The Bull Gates wtf dude
"Changed my life"
...as if
Ur name should be Gabe Newell lmao
@@wolfgangvan-uber6515 Why not?
Noah! Didn't expect to see you here.
All that research. This review is anything but "lazy".
ikr
"FBI NBC DICK"
I see what you did there :p
I thought I was the only one who caught that. :P
5:29
+c0d3r3d I love how he slipped D.I.C.K. in there lol
7777 likes
See, the only one I caught was DICK. Shows what my brain is good for. Dirty crossword searches.
I love Minesweeper. I play Simon Tatham's version, it's a copy of the Windows one, but generates games that are guaranteed to never need you to guess. I played a 70x140 games with 2021 mines (expert density) and it took me 114 minutes. Great fun.
Thank you very much for this, it's the perfect version of this game. It always frustrated me when the regular Windows version makes me guess.
My favorite tactic is bruteforce
Eepu
I prefer D.I.C.K
aidan c. Is it me or are we both inmature
RoboDoc I didn't even know Minesweeper was a strategy game until now...
And here I thought I knew everything about such a simple game.
why are you here
Why are you here
Why are you here
Every night...
What is this sorcery? When did Minesweeper become this complicated?
Maria D. Is he still a wizard?
Maria D. Hogwarts
sweeprr bezow I'm pretty sure that was the joke.
the quality of your vids is raising exponentially
Happy Bear Glad you think so, I've been trying for sure :)
Happy Bear 146dennis dennirs e
Rwqtdaa Snibla Dwtrs134ffdszsj Opeytd Quake1p H1r6denniesaners to be able the same time chirs wows
As always, another great video. Minesweeper is such a classic time-waster. It was also one of the first games I wrote in my spare time. I wrote it for my graphing calculator during class in high school, then I ported it to windows. I took a slightly different approach and wrote algorithms to work with many different tessellations. It could work with squares, triangles, pentagons, mixed shapes, etc. with different adjacent edges..
I still have no idea what chording is :D
just like a musical chord consists of several notes played unison in a single stroke, chording is clearing all "safe" (unflagged) squares around a number with a single click. That is to avoid clicking more than once and clear them all in a single "move".
Yeah, I had not heard of "chording" before seeing this video. I always just clicked one square at a time. No wonder my times were so bad!
Like David says it is a move that can both save time and is also safer because you can't missclick. Well unless you missclick the number when you chord, then you are really screwed I guess :P
Also I've been doing chording for years I never knew it had a name before today.
I remember when I beat minesweeper on expert for the first time...
One of my proudest days :')
Thanks for believing in me :P
this was inspiring
congrats bro..... You're one of the legendary hardcore gamer
I remember beater mine sweeper in 11 seconds
@@freedomperson1012 beat it in 4 seconds
It's frustrating when someone sees you play minesweeper and they get puzzled by how I solve the game, try to explain, and they still get puzzled.
It's definitely something that requires an astute, hyperlogical mind.
No it's not it's so simple.. chess is hard, go is hard, this is not even close to hard, the logic really IS simple it's just a matter of how fast you can do it
@@Manas-co8wl What? Chess is easy. The rules are pretty clear. With minesweeper, it's like a drunk teacher trying to explain quantum physics to a toddler.
@@Manas-co8wl And also having good luck. A lot of maps make it so you have a 50/50 shot on landing on a mine you know is there
Fake. No one can win this game
Also worth mentioning as part of the game's strange history is the International Campaign To Ban Winmine, an Italian group that considered the game offensive to, you know, actual landmine victims. Microsoft eventually responded by replacing Minesweeper in Italian copies of Windows 2000 onwards with "Prato Fiorito", a reskinned version that replaces mines with flowers. You can see this briefly in the Vista footage in the video, where it was an alternative game mode in all regions.
Here's a blog post a Microsoft developer wrote back in the day about the slings and arrows of releasing the Vista version of Minesweeper without offending anyone: web.archive.org/web/20080119193217/shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/09/26/The-UI-design-minefield-_2D00_-er_2E002E002E00_-flower-field_3F003F00_.aspx
Because making the player think minesweeping is a good thing is _offensive_ :p
"So there's a problem in that region, huh? Okay, cover it up!"
I never knew how to play minesweeper until I had to write an algorithm to score the game for a programming job interview
That was *fascinating*. The history was the best part. Thank you! I'll never look at that little start menu time soak in exactly the same way again!
My best friend is amazing at minesweeper, she can play on the largest grid and hardest levels and win almost every time plus she barely takes half a second to click on a tile. It just blows my mind.
Minesweeper IS casual because, barring cheats and glitches, it's possible to make no mistakes and still completely fail, or have to chose by random purely due to RNG and not because of actual skill or effort.
I hate playing large games when they turn out to be a coin toss at the end :@
check out tentaizu
Kai thanks, cool game
Yeah I can tell you guys are minesweeper veterans :P
It is why I don't play it as much these days, beating that damn board with logic and probability and knowledge only to end up with two fucking mines in a corner and I have to take a 50-50 chance.
Smash melee also has rng
Out of curiosity, is Minesweeper and Picross essentially the same game?
We had minesweeper on the old windows 3.1 computers at my school, but I never learnt the rules, so found it a confusing mess. But I got incredibly addicted to Picross on the DS when it first game out. But they just look so familiar now.
Mmm, I know what you mean, but
not really. The logic that's used is pretty different. IMO picross plays a lot more like Sudoku than minesweeper...plus you can make a mistake without your board blowing up.
You must have gone to a posh school Larry. All my school had was BBC Micro's and Acorns up until I left in 95. I tell a lie, they had Atari ST's in the music room.
Daniel Vickers Oh, we had BBC Micros, but they had been relegated to a recreation room to play games on, until someone found it funny to pour hot chocolate down the back of one. You could see visions of Hell on the screen.
Not really no, Picross is similar in concept but a lot different when you play it
They're pretty much the opposite game. In Picross, your goal is to REVEAL all the hidden tiles instead of avoiding them, and the clues for them are given you at the start.
Plus, there's no such thing as an automated clear of empty tiles, since the concept of the game makes YOU the one who needs to figure out which ones are empty.
"WHY ARE YOU HERE?"
"BECAUSE WE'RE BORED!"
"THAT CLOCK IS GONNA KEEP THICKING UNTIL IT REACHES 999!"
"What happens then?"
"NOTHING! You just suck!"
I am logically inclined, that's why I don't mind Minesweeper. Cause you have to guess. Not only in the beginning, but (even worse) at any point in the game you might be forced to make a guess.
And after solving 98 mines having to guess the last one is not very rewarding.
Acturally the map isnt generated untill you make your first move..
its impossible to die on the first move..
It's less about logic and more about speed. And a tiny bit of luck
I completely agree. Especially when logic says that the last mine is in one of these two adjacent squares. As for the rest of the game, it is 100% my fault because I have just made an illogical move. With some initial random clicks, my best ever time was 59 seconds. My usual 'good' time is around 3 minutes.
Minesweeper has a community!? O__o
yep. apparently
There's 7 billion people on this planet so yes...
If Paedophiles have a community, so goes everything else
I got deep into sweeping in the early 2000's. This is bringing back a lot of nostalgia... 2, 21 and 81 were my beginner, intermediate and expert times. Nowhere near record breaking, but took over 3 years to get that quick.
Also, hurts to see random guessing in the video when a clear logical choice was available...
dude it takes me 700 seconds to clear an expert board lmao
Awesome, great video as alwayes. You really blew my mind with this one
holy crap that was a great episode i love the more documentary style videos you've been doing as of late you have a great voice for it
confession: i have never successfully completed a game of minesweeper without hitting a bomb....
I have, a couple times. Not on hard, that is impossible.
Doctor Whouse bruh I got addicted to it after playing it in a boring class. Now anytime I play it I have to do custom bc the hardest level is never enough
I’m really into minesweeper, especially playing the easy mode because it’s the most competitive one, it’s really quick also so I did it thousands of times. my record is 6sec
pedro Sukita yeah the easy mode is often less riddled with chance and more logic.
I think i beat hard once when i was seventeen
The google one
Type in minesweeper on google
another entertaining and well-written video!!! appreciate all the research you put into things like this -- in this case something millions of people played but most never thought twice about
I do enjoy playing minesweeper. Not competitively but I like logic puzzles.
2:00 - 2:10: One of many reasons why I love LGR videos
Now, in 2019, most "casual" games to ever come bundled with Windows are free to download on Microsoft Store. They're all squeaky clean UWP apps with more Xbox Live integration than necessary, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that they can run unmodified on Xbox One.
I wish, though, that Purble Place and 3D Pinball Space Cadet also got the UWP treatment. At least the binaries from XP and Vista still run on 10.
You learn something new everyday. It's 2017 and I never knew these techniques existed. I've played minesweeper over the years and had it on many p c back in the day but was always just casual to it and thank you for this amazing video:)
Wait I always thought you just clicked on random squares and hoped you never lost
that's why I was so bad at it
Matt Weiman I know!! I thought the numbers were just some sort of scoring system when I was younger!
lol same
I had no idea how minesweeper worked. Once again Clint, your content and style are second to none. Thanks!
they removed minesweeper from windows 10
They didn't actually; you can download it from the Windows Store.
Only if you don't keep the Store up to date. Mine's always ready to go. I use a Surface though, so I'm in there often to keep things up to date.
The new Minesweeper "app" is fun, but a serious resource hog. It makes the fan on the i5 SP4 go full speed, and on my i7 OC'ed desktop, adventure mode is very laggy and buggy. :(
I hate Microsoft. They have managed to make a game that could easily run on an 10MHz 386 with 4MB of RAM laggy on an i5 with 4GB or RAM...
Also the OS uses a TON of RAM. Is Microsoft even trying to optimize windows anymore? This is why I'm staying with Win7.
No it doesn't. If you like Windows 7, that's great. Please don't spread bogus information.
Now Chrome, on the other hand, uses a TON of RAM.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for letting me know about this. I had no idea there was so much sophistication to Minesweeper, but I always loved this game. I am so glad to know that it wasn't just me, but that this is a for real thing to be taken seriously. Thank. You. So. Much.
Now do a video on how NetHack is the ultimate casual game.
Are you a wizard?
***** The magic of being a Patreon of mine :) Early access!
Lazy Game Reviews The vanguard who choose to not abuse their power to post the word "First".
>Nethack
>Ultimate casual game
Still haven't made it past Oracle, don't hurt my feelings.
Dark Souls is casual game
to be honest, other than serious music experts, this is my favorite totally nerd out channel, :) glad to be a subscriber,gretings from argentina
ps: have you tough on doing a Paint compilation about all the versions MS paint had? altough prettymuch paint has die with a horrible not fully pixelated brush since xp, its still worth remenbering all the versions, expecially that 98 classic)
I've heard once that this game, and many other standard Windows games, are actually secret tutorials for using a mouse. Also, chording can now be done by middle clicking.
Νot really "secret" tutorials, lol. It's not like they were trying to hide their purpose. They were just simple tutorials in game form made to teach people how to use a mouse. Similar to how you have Miss Mavis teaches typing, which is a game which teaches touch typing on the keyboard
I was going to comment on another video, "please make a video on Minesweeper", but it turned out, you already had! And I'm not disappointed!
This is what happens when computer scientists get bored and waste time.
Clint, Your videos are the shit! You are one of my favorite if not by far my favorite channel... just wanted to give you props, cause im excited about every one of your videos!!! :D
I hate the extent to which Microsoft bloated up Minesweeper and Solitaire from Windows 8 onwards. It's ridiculous. Fair enough, by all means make them look and sound a bit nicer (Windows 7) but making it into a full-screen "app" with relatively long loading times, ads, online connectivity, daily challenges etc. was taking things too far and should have been reserved for a separate version. The sense of "casualness" has been diminished significantly.
And don't get me started on what they did to the calculator in Windows 10 :| There are some complete nutcases at Redmond.
Killing it as always LGR . Love this channel.
This channel could sell me watching paint dry as being hardcore.
Videos like this are why I subscribed to you. And also why you continue to be my favorite youtuber
I once won a game of Minesweeper. It was the day I won the lottery and befriended a unicorn.
I used to play this game at work when I was an intern and worked my way up to intermediate difficulty. Fastest time was 40 seconds.
Chording is when you use the middle mouse button or left and right together and click on a number where you have flagged all the possible locations of a mine, then the game will use math to determine which squares around the numbers are ok to press and then press them. A one on a corner is always a mine, so flag the box and then use chording on the other numbers around it.
If you flag the wrong box and chord a number, you'll strike a mine automatically.
I didn t know flags existed so I always played no flag
2:03 - the "stargate" sequence from Space Odyssey is more of what came to my mind. :)
How many HORRIBLE memories...
Watches LGR video > opens minesweeper > explodes > exit out the game > slits throat > survives > lives another day to watch more LGR videos.
My best time was 77 seconds on expert years ago.
hans I got 0 minutes because i sucked at minesweeper and never finished it
That's insanely good! Sub 50sec is what the top 100 in the world have!
@@AlkisGD My record is like 168 on intermediate
LOL the Eric Wareheim footage! You never cease to amaze me, LGR.
I hate minesweeper. If I'm going to be stuck playing the standard computer games, I'll go with solitaire.
Maria D. Space Pinball ftw. 8)
***** *Salutes* 8)
I prefer MS Paint.
*****
You're gonna carry that ball.
I prefer DOS command prompt .
5:42 No, what are you doing. Please, stop taking risks, there are moves you can do that guarantee your victory.
God...
I've heard you need a good computer to run it.
***** They totally should do that, if only for the sake of trolling :) If Call of Duty can artificially raise system requirements to make it look next-gen (aka Ghosts), why shouldn't Microsoft do the same? Next-gen Minesweeper, now with mindblowing graphics, more mines and time counter that only stops at 99999999999 seconds!
zenaido andrade I heard they are making it 3d on the next generation of consoles, the N 64. I wonder what it stands for :o
I ran it on an evil computer and it worked just fine
I actually used one of those other minesweeper clients for a while. I really liked how I could graph my progress and compare the various statistics (RQI 3BV etc)
I got pretty happy with my highscores, though of course not nearly fast enough to enter the true ranks online.
You are the god of nerds, lgr. :D
And you sir I a blessed son of Odin. Oh, and you really f'd up letting Logitha go. That chick is smokin. Tell Floki I said what's up. Fuckin love that guy!
I didnt let Lathgertha go, she left me and took my little boy. She will regret it, once Im king of England, you will see. Oh.. and Floki, he didnt even send me an invite to his wedding, can you believe that?! Skol, my friend! ;)
Ragnar Lothbrok Wake early if you want
another man's life or land.
No lamb for the lazy wolf.
No battle's won in bed.
Skol, Jalr Ragnar!
Good grief, LGR, I'm gonna be honest. My favorite game reviewer-types have always been the funny ones, the colorful ones, the guys like JonTron and PBG and ProJared. I subscribe to guys like you generally for here-and-there bursts of amusement and padding in between the releases of 'bigger' reviewers. But as time's gone on, I've seen you continually prove to be one of the most informative and thorough yet succinct reviewers, covering content vastly different than most and in a different way and not only do I always finish the video entertained but very often really feel like I've learned something. And to top it all off, you've got this killer subtle humor -- and then this video, with that Tim and Eric gif just sailing across the screen, you had me on the floor. I might have a new favorite reviewer.
(Also, speaking of other reviewers; TicTactics looks like a clone/port of the Atari 2600 3D Tic Tac Toe game Mike Matei just reviewed on Cinemassacre...)
I still have no idea how to play/win this game.
LGR, Awesome show, great job!!
5:13 KID PIX!
And I'm against the government's Kid Pix program !
Love Minesweeper. Great vid!
I never understood why so many people don't understand how to play Minesweeper. I literally figured it out when I was 5.
ShortFingeredShreder And if you are older than five, all you need to do is to read the manual
I know right!! This comment section is blowing my mind right now I thought everyone knew how to play Minesweeper! Is it just my country or something? It's not bullshit at all, 5 may be pushing it but I definitely knew how to play this game at the age of ten, ins and outs.
Thanks for reminding me of the game I always played in easy mode. I would some times play in the hardest mode where there was only ONE safe space on the board just so I could click on a mine space and watch the fun chain reaction as the mines blew up in a wave across the board. :D
Why cant u just flag every sqaure lol
Because that would result in no swept mines. It's called Mine _sweeper_ not Mine _flagger!_
I used to love playing MineSweeper multiplayer on MSN.
All those late evenings chatting to people playing Mine Sweeper. Good times.
I hate this game.
Everyone hates you
:(
I recently completed building a windows 7 gaming PC, and I have to say that during my many hours of downloading from steam/origin and installing my old games via disc, Minesweeper was nothing less than a godsend! It's offline as to not slow your downloads, comes pre-installed with Windows, and is strangely addictive.
MLG Minesweeper
chording is actually really useful, even a bit of a crutch for me. all i do is chord now, since it the ability to just open up huge amounts of space like that and not have to click squares basically makes it so you never accidently click a square that has a mine when clearing. in addition to this, completely eliminates the need to figure out which squares are safe, i can do a chord n boom all safe squares were revealed. much simpler to only have to look for mines and have to occasionally search for safe squares when a chord isnt possible
Minesweeper = guessing game.
Not even a little bit! It's pure logic, except on the rare occasion that you find a 50/50 chance cell.
Lazy Game Reviews I remember the day my high-school German teacher explained how minesweeper works to me and the other student aid. (Yes, in that period, he had aids.) I always knew there was more to it than just guessing, but I'd never really took enough time to figure it out. Things changed, that day. The simple logic... Oh how good it feels to rule over it!
neonte13 he had AIDS?! that's terrible, but I guess no price is too high to be good at minesweeper.
I know, right? And in most classes, he had no aids, that one, he had two... Ha ha ha! Two aids!
neonte13 * aides
Even without having put any research into Minesweeper (this is the first time I learned there's a professional scene), I still realized the MS version ... Well, it blows. Hard.
In Expert mode, there's pretty much always at the very least two fields which contain one mine, and there's absolutely no way to logically figure out where it actually is. It becomes pure guesswork.
Never understood this game as a kid. Watched this video, got minesweeper for my phone and won for the first time ever today. Now I'm completely addicted. Thanks for that!
You should've talked about the secret difficulty of Minesweeper where if you finish all three difficulties and right-click on the smiley, it would turn red and the field would wrap.
I love Minesweeper at one point in time as a kid I learned how to figure out the pattern, and it was cool clearing a small board eventually I'd move to larger boards until I just got board of it a couple years ago.
Still I love it, and its a challenge not many consider
Brilliant video. So much I didn't know about Minesweeper.
I spent as much time listening to your explanation of Minesweeper as I did playing it in the 90s. Abandoned at 2:31 :) Love you videos though.
it was my love for minesweeper that led me to discover Picross Puzzles, which I am somewhat obsessed with. I haven't played it in ages.
WOW, the serious side of minesweeper. Great as always. Tks LGR.
This video actually stirs some really painful memories. Unemployed in 2008, I got seriously addicted to minesweeper, playing the game 5 hours or more every single day. I reached a top 40 UK combined-time ranking as my life unravelled, finally getting my career back on course six months down the line!
Don't underestimate the hardcore nature of this game. Symptomatic of wider issues I had but still, probably represents the lowest point in my life!! Fun times
I recently found an old HP 200LX at Goodwill. Nifty find, full DOS computer in a compact handheld. I mention it here because it has a weird little variant of Minesweeper on it called "Hearts and Bones". There's no mouse, so you can't do the "chording" technique, and you can't in fact put the cursor over a square without clearing it, meaning you can only work from a cleared area, and are unable to click on unconnected areas of the grid. You also have to collect hearts spread across the grid to clear the level. You can mark mines by moving to a square next to the mine you want to mark, hitting a mark key, and pressing in the direction of the square.
It's not a great version of the game, but it's still very playable. The other game that comes installed is "Lair of the Squid", in which there's a false 3d maze that you travel around in, collecting letters to make a password to leave the level, and there are, for some reason, squids that murder you.
Ordered a CF card and a PCMCIA adapter for it, so I'll hopefully be putting some more interesting software onto the machine soon. It's fully DOS compatible, and does CGA graphics, so there's a lot to choose from.
Wow. LGR, the person who can make even Minesweeper to be an interesting subject. Well done.
wow minesweeper. its been some long time since i played that game. thanks for this video. brings me back memories of the 90s
Speaking of old games like this, has anyone heard of Harry and the Falling Rocks? It was a Windows game back in the day, probably 98 but not certain. I found the prairie dog shooting game, but I can't seem to track this one down. I remember it being a side-on view where the player controlled a head that would dig through the sand, having rocks that would fall if dug directly underneath. The overall color scheme was beige sand, silver stones, and I think a maroon or mauve for Harry himself.
*Herman and the Falling Rocks?
ua-cam.com/video/k5U0mz8ZPm0/v-deo.html
are you talking about "Dig Dig"?
*Dig Dug
bloodymist154 No, it was Herman, as LGR replied very helpfully. Thank you, though.