What the heck is Minesweeper?

According to TechRadar, Minesweeper was created by Microsoft in the 1990s,[5] but Eurogamer commented that Minesweeper gained a lot of inspiration from a "lesser known, tightly designed game", Mined-Out by Ian Andrew for the ZX Spectrum in 1983. According to Andrew, Microsoft copied Mined-Out for Microsoft Minesweeper.

The Microsoft version made its first appearance in 1990, in Windows Entertainment Pack, which was given as part of Windows 3.11. The game was written by Robert Donner and Curt Johnson. Johnson stated that Microsoft Minesweeper's design was borrowed from another game, but it was not Mined-Out, and he does not remember which game it was.

In 2001, a group called the International Campaign to Ban Winmine campaigned for the game's topic to be changed from landmines. The group commented that the game "is an offence against the victims of the mines". A later version, found present in Windows Vista's Minesweeper, offered a tileset with flowers replacing mines as a response.

The game is frequently bundled with operating systems and desktop environments, including Minesweeper for IBM's OS/2, Microsoft Windows, KDE, GNOME and Palm OS. Microsoft Minesweeper was included by default in Windows until Windows 8 (2012). Microsoft replaced this with a free-to-play version of the game, downloadable from the Microsoft Store.

Variants of Minesweeper have been made that expand on the basic concepts and add new game design elements. Minesweeper X is a clone of the Microsoft version with improved randomization and more statistics,and is popular with players of the game intending to reach a fast time.[6] Arbiter and Viennasweeper are also clones, and are used similarly to Minesweeper X. Crossmines is a more complex version of the game's base idea, adding linked mines and irregular blocks. BeTrapped transposes the game into a mystery game setting.There are several direct clones of Microsoft Minesweeper available online.

Minesweeper was made part of RuneScape through a minigame called Vinesweeper. The non-Japanese releases of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver contained a variation of both Minesweeper and Picross.[10] The video game Minecraft released a version of Minesweeper in its 2015 April Fool's update. The HP-48G graphing calculator includes a variant called "Minehunt", where the player has to move safely from one corner of the playfield to the other. The only clues given are how many mines are in the squares surrounding the player's current position. Google search includes a version of Minesweeper as an easter egg, available by searching the game's name.

A logic puzzle variant of minesweeper, suitable for playing on paper, starts with some squares already revealed. The player cannot reveal any more squares, but must instead mark the remaining mines correctly. Unlike the usual form of minesweeper, these puzzles usually have a unique solution. These puzzles appeared under the name "tentaizu" (天体図), Japanese for a star map, in Southwest Airlines' magazine Spirit in 2008–2009.