What we used to play on the old Windows

Windows is known for its popular games that were presented even on the earliest versions. These card and board games gained huge popularity and even nowadays people spend lots of time playing them. No matter their simple design, they captured a great audience. Let’s discover the fascinating solitaire history and interesting details about Minesweeper.

The breakthrough of a single-player card game

The traditional Solitaire and FreeCell Solitaire was popular in Europe since that time when the possibility of long journeys appeared. After a few centuries, it was adapted for the computers due to the following reasons:

  • it is single-player and therefore easy to program as it does not require the usage of artificial intelligence;
  • simple rules are easy to draw and the first computer graphics were good enough for this task;
  • it required a tiny amount of memory.

Until 2021, this game was the most used Windows application and became the usual part of a daily routine of office workers. Unfortunately, Windows 8 did not include it as a standard and fans were really disappointed. However, the situation was improved in Windows 10 three years later.

Minesweeper and its popularity

Unlike Solitaire and other similar games, Minesweeper was created by programmers in their spare time without any special purpose. They just borrow a few existing ideas and join them together. 

The gamer has to click on the squares and reveal their contents. Some of them contain mines, others do not, and the game appears to be an awesome combination of a game and a puzzle that became highly popular.

It’s worth mentioning that the program protects the gamer as the first selected cell never contains a mine. However, unlike Solitaire, Minesweeper has some trappings that are similar to video games. For example, it includes a timer for motivation to play swiftly and get the best score.