Let’s talk about what is acceptable and what isn’t today. In my book, the game Minesweeper* is a very acceptable game. It is a game of skill and awareness. Not just anyone can be good at Minesweeper; it takes a special blend of patience and determination in order to succeed at the highest levels.
At least that’s what I had thought. Then I started my journey around the world. While I was sitting on the plane, I witnessed a game of Minesweeper being played by a boy I assessed to be in his late teens at best. He seemed pretty savvy with the keyboard shortcuts, so I can assume he’s not new to computers or the game of Minesweeper. I’ll tell you right now that if I were a scout for the national Minesweeper team, I wouldn’t spend much time on this kid. He was making bad moves and getting stuck when there were still plenty of obvious mines to mark and move on. It was hard enough just to watch him struggle through his bad moves, let alone not go over there and manually instruct him on how to play the game. Then he did something that made me want to press the call button for the flight attendant and request that he be forcibly ejected from the plane. He got halfway through the board, was stuck, SAVED the game, made a wrong choice, then reloaded from the save point!!!
This, my friends, is unacceptable! The game of Minesweeper teaches us valuable life lessons about how to make good, logical, well-thought-out choices. You need to know that if you choose wrong, you will die in a fiery explosion and the game of life will end. You can’t just save it, test your choice and if you get it wrong, reload from that save point! It’s completely against the code of the Shuck N Jive. It is something that I will not stand for. As soon as I landed, I sent a letter to the M.A.N. (Minesweepers Association of Nantucket, the foremost authority of Minesweeper players everywhere) to officially have his Minesweeper license revoked for life.
I wish that’s where the story ended, but it is not. The reason the letter was sent as soon as I landed and not shortly after I landed is because after saving and reloading nearly half a dozen times, he “beat” the game and gave an overly enthusiastic fist pump as a means of self congratulation. This is beyond unacceptable. There can be no celebrating that victory, only mourning the death of your self respect.
*You’ll notice that I never explain the rules of Minesweeper. That is because I believe this game to be more popular than soccer, so it would waste our time as a society for me to bother explaining it. It should also be considered redundant and unnecessary. And if you don’t know what it is, then I probably don’t even want to talk to you in public anyway.
3 comments:
As a person that has spent most of her free days and considers it a mark of her womanhood, a mark of her contribution to society and a mark of personal validation trying to beat her Minesweeper times at all three available levels (Beginner, Intermediate and Expert) ((NO, I will not disclose my best times)) and failing repeatedly I am appalled! I couldn't breath and sat there clutching my heart for a good 30 minutes before gathering enough rage and strength to type this comment.
I mean, sure, sometimes I use the custom game tool to train myself, much like someone slowly increases their speed on a treadmill. But save?? Save and repeat the SAME game only to "succeed" after a dozen tries? THEN congratulate myself for it?
I would rather blow myself up with 99 virtual mines.
Also, I was not aware there was a save function.
What is this, an upgraded version?
Where might one get one of those?
Syar: I believe it is an upgrade that is made available with Windows Vista. I do not currently have that version either. I will not comment on whether or not that outraged me.
Post a Comment