Minesweeper

Minesweeper is the classic logic puzzle in which a grid of hidden cells conceals a fixed number of mines, and the player must uncover every safe square without detonating one. Numbers revealed on uncovered cells indicate how many mines touch that square, and flags mark suspected mines. Mac shareware authors produced numerous ports of the format throughout the System 7 and Mac OS 8 era.

Gameplay

Click a cell to reveal it. If it is a mine, the game ends; otherwise the cell shows a number from 1 to 8 (or is empty, cascading open neighboring blanks). The player wins by uncovering every non-mine square, typically using right-click or modifier-click to flag mines.

Difficulty

Most versions offer beginner, intermediate, and expert presets that vary the grid size and mine density, plus a custom mode for picking your own dimensions. Best times are usually persisted per difficulty.

Origins of the format

The puzzle traces back to mainframe games of the 1960s and 1970s and was popularized by Microsoft's bundled Windows Minesweeper in the early 1990s, which inspired the wave of Mac freeware and shareware clones that followed.

On Classic Mac

Mac implementations are typically tiny, run cleanly under System 7 through Mac OS 9 on 68k or PowerPC hardware, and use standard Mac UI conventions for menus, dialogs, and high-score lists.