Minefield was written in 1981 for the Nascom 1 and Nascom 2 by Level 9 Computing.

The game was written by Pete Austin in the Q1 language created by his younger brother, Mike Austin. Early advertisements described the game as "Cross a deadly minefield using a dodgy detector".

Pete told msgame (2022) that most of their early arcade games were written "really quickly, in a week or less" and that Minefield was based on a "concept taken from an existing game". Minefield appears to have been written in November or December 1981.

The following attributes can be used to map the evolution of Minesweeper. Blue cells are confirmed attributes for official versions of Minefield. Yellow cells are unknown.