Minefield
(P)Review
Another long forgotten game was found somewhere on a dusty disk within the
secret archives of MJJ-Prod. Steph/MJJ-Prod brings you one of his boyhood sins
:) The original version is delivered as a zipped MSA file for easy use with
Emulators like STEem or SainT. The zip-file also contains a GIF version of the
title picture. There hasn't appeared a downloadable file version yet, which will
make the blood of some real hardware users boil for sure. :)
Minefield is a plain Minesweeper clone, without much effects or demo like
gimmicks on top. So if you like Minesweeper you would like Minefield too I
guess. If only there weren't these (tiny) annoyances. But we will discuss them
later.
What does Minefield offer its player? You get the usual minesweeper style
graphics, a nice tune by Jedi/Sector 1 and six different level layouts with
adjustable mine numbers. The initial number of mines differs on a per level
basis and is remembered within the same session of the game for each level. To
change the number of mines you have to perform a click each time you want to
increase or decrease the number of mines by one. Lucky enough there is a second
mouse button too :). A right click does the job by ten mines per click.
If you manage to click a mine and blow yourself up, the whole screen is shaken
vertically. While this happens it shows you some ugly glitches at the very top
and bottom of the screen. These glitches - which are also famous under the term
"Mystic Sprite-Land" - can easily be removed by either adding empty space above
and below the playfield buffer or by modifying the rendering routine, which
would the cleaner solution.
What's most annoying about the game is the fact that it seems not to recognize
all original rules. When you play Minesweeper, you automatically win the game,
if the number of undiscovered fields matches the number of remaining mines. It
should be pretty easy to count the remaining, non discovered fields and compare
them to the number of remaining mines. If the numbers match, and all identified
mines are correct you should have won. Minefield however keeps increasing its
time counter until you identify all mines manually with a right click. If you
manage to complete that task you'll get a huge well done message printed on the
screen and that's it. No new levels with increasing difficulty or something.
What a bummer. If Steph finds the source and puts a bit more work into that
game, it would be pretty nice for all those Minesweeper fanatics out there.
Anyway in its current state it looks more beta-ish than final.
Cyclone/X-Troll for Alive 2004-08-07
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Game Title: Minefield
Genre: Minesweeper Clone
Supported Machines: [*] ST [*] STE [?] TT [?] Falcon [?] CT60
Minimum Memory: [*] 512 kb [ ] 1 MB [ ] 2MB [ ] 4 MB [ ] more
HDD Installable: [*] yes [ ] no
Coding Language: GFA BASIC
Description: Classic Minesweeper ... in French atm
Game Design: Steph/MJJPROD
Coding: Steph/MJJPROD
Artwork: Steph/MJJPROD
Sound: Jedi/SECTOR 1
Current State: An English version should be released if sources are found
Planned Release: 7/08/2004 in French
Website: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mjjprod/
Contact: mjj (at) freemind-tobe (dot) com
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