What is the name of a game that came with windows 98?

Question

It consisted of a field of squares similar to minesweeper, but you clicked on a squares to turn them red or blue and hit play. A certain set of rules determined whether the square stayed 'on' or turned 'off' (e.g. if the square in question was surrounded by 4 or more squares it would turn off, 2 or less and it would turn off, etc.) I loved this game and I just cant remember the name of it.

Answer 1

Was it "Lose Your Marbles" It came with the 98 plus pack.  Or are you thinking of Reversi?

Answer 2

This game sounds like "Life." No, I'm not talking about the board game where you move a little car with pegs in it around a game board that looks like crisscrossing winding roads and try to accumulate as much money as possible. The game I am thinking of is quite different.

Back in the late 1960s or early '70s, someone wrote a simple program in which the goal was to create a successful colony of "cells" on a grid. Each square on a grid can hold one cell. The eight squares that are directly adjacent to a square (orthoganal or diagonal) affect what happens in that square.  Any particular square is either populated (on) or vacant (off). This aspect makes it ideal for a computer to process.

Once you have set up a pattern of cells, you run the program. The program processes the cells as follows:

- Any cell that has cells in less than two adjacent squares "dies" due to underpopulation, and is turned off.

- Any cell that has cells in more than four adjacent squares "dies" due to overpopulation, and is turned off.

- Any empty square that has cells in exactly three adjacent squares is "born," and is turned on.

- All squares are processed in this way simultaneously.

This cycle is repeated as often as you desire, or until all of the cells in the grid die. If your pattern grows and continues to increase in population, you are successful. If they all die out, stabilize in one particular pattern, or run a cycle of repeating patterns, you have failed.

Is this the game you are thinking of? I don't know what it's called in Windows 98, but it was originally called Life when it resided on a mainframe computer. - LJS