Games &Fun

1992: "Minesweeper" is released together with Windows 3. 1. The puzzle game is simple, but has an extremely high addictive factor.

A grey rectangular playing field with 64 squares, red flags and 16 hidden mines: That's all a cult game needs. "Minesweeper" is one of those games that every computer owner has tried out before. The principle is as simple as the graphics: The goal is to uncover all fields without hitting a mine. "Minesweeper" is included in all versions of the operating system since Windows 3. 1. The basic game principle had existed before, but Microsoft made it popular with "Minesweeper". In 1992 it was something very special: a game you only had to call up without installing anything. Together with the "solitaire" integrated in Windows 3. 1, "Minesweeper" developed into a time waster.

One second to the target

The virtual mine hunt at "Minesweeper" works with a mouse click: To do this, click with the left mouse button on any field. If there is a mine there, the game is lost: it explodes and turns red - and the grinning smiley at the top looks evil. If the field is safe, a number appears: It indicates how many mines there are in the adjacent eight squares. If you suspect one on a field, click with the right mouse button and mark it with a red flag. From the first click the game counts the seconds - the faster all fields are uncovered, the better. The time pressure and the simple principle increase the addiction factor: "Minesweeper" tempts you to play again quickly to win or break your own record. "Minesweeper" records are still circulating on the Internet today. So it took the fastest just a second to solve the game. If this seems too easy, try other difficulty levels: In the advanced version the field has 256 fields and 40 mines, for the pros there are 480 fields and 99 mines. You can also customize the game and decide for yourself how many fields and mines there should be. The advantages for YOU:

• unlimited access

Imagine that the Snake game used to be one of the most played computer games. Our fathers and grandfathers played very enthusiastically with it. It is a game that is assigned to the skill game genre. Such games require very good fine motor skills and pronounced reaction skills from players. For me personally, this is only half the truth. Pressing buttons quickly and at the right moment is certainly not so easy, but very easy to do when the hunted object is in close proximity. It looks a little different when it's not. This calls for other skills such as spatial perception or the selection of the best possible target path. This also increases the demands a player has to make for this game. Snake is an excellent example of this, although it is such a spartanly designed game with equally simple rules, but the challenge can be very challenging and very attractive to the player. This is where the well-known saying comes into play: "Not all that glitters is gold";. There are many examples of this. If you think of Tetris or Mahjong, they are classics whose presentation is limited to the bare essentials, the rules of the game are easy to understand, and probably that's why they are still very popular today and are played with pleasure.

There you go: The goal of the game is to guide the snake to catch as much food as possible without encountering obstacles. These include the boundary of the playing field, and own body parts of the snake. At the beginning of the game, a small snake appears in the middle of the playing field, consisting only of one building block: the head. After that the morsels appear. The player leads the snake, or more precisely its head part, to the body part of the morsel. He uses the arrow keys on the keyboard to do this. If the morsel is touched it disappears, the snake becomes one body part longer and somewhere on the board a new morsel of food appears. The morsel of food: At the beginning of the game always a bite appears. End of game: The player may grow the snake and maneuver it as long as he does not touch any obstacles. These include the boundaries of the playing field and of course the snake's own body parts. The advantages for YOU:

• unlimited access