Game

For the past week or so I’ve contemplated if I should skip this one. Would it be weird to have a catalogue of every single game I’ve done on Retro Achievements, but go from 225 to 227? Would that invite more dialogue and mystery than the ACTUAL game #226, Minesweeper, could hold?

It’s not like this is for anyone. It’s basically just an excuse for me to write about games I play. Fun little dialogues and reviews. But what the hell do you say about Minesweeper? Genuinely and honestly?

Game

Well… this is an MSX port of Minesweeper. It’s from 2023/2024, and was made by Under4Mhz. You can find it on itch. It is… a port of Minesweeper. To the MSX.

There are three settings. Small, medium, and large. It’s a logic puzzle. It- who am I kidding, you know what Minesweeper is. I was never the LARGEST Minesweeper fan, my Windows time waster of choice was actually Hearts, but I’ve played some games that take the formula and twist it wildly on their head. Puzzle games that really recontextualize what minesweeper really is. Going back to basics, however, Minesweeper is… fine, and good. But it’s a time waster. And boy did this waste my time.

It took me two hours to beat Minesweeper three times. That sounds bad, and it is. I have no idea if the regular ol’ Windows XP Minesweeper is this bad, but this kept giving me unwinnable states. It’s VERY easy to make a board where you get everything but one corner, and then it’s just a fucking 50/50 on whether or not the last square is a mine. I never did too well as a kid to get that far on the large boards, so I have no idea how common that was, but it happened to me THREE TIMES HERE. I failed the coin flip twice.

Look, do you want to play Minesweeper? Play any of the handful of modern iterations. You don’t need to bust out an MSX.