Mines was written for MS-DOS by Walt Stoneburner in 1989.

The default game is 14*9 with 25 mines, but you can choose between 10 and 50 mines. You must find a path from the top left corner to the bottom right corner using your mine detector. You clear adjacent empty cells by pressing [SPACEBAR].

The objective of mines is to walk from the upper left corner of a mine field to the bottom right corner, which is marked with a percent sign. You are represented as an at-sign, and must navigate using information about the area around you. But if you happen to make a mistake and step on a mine, you will be blown up and have to start all over with a fresh mine field.

Version 2.0 introduced a BOSS key where you choose a text file to replace the game when your boss appears!

Version 3.0 introduced commands when starting the game. These allow you to auto-clear adjacent mines (CLEAR), mark mines (MARK), suppress sound (QUIET), stop you from being able to click on marked mines (PROTECT), show mine locations when the game ends (UNMAPPED) or play the same board again after losing (RETRY).

Mines was written by Stoneburner after finding a Minefield game on the Data General MV/10000 mainframe at college. He told msgame (2022) that you could play the game by connecting to the mainframe using a Data General D14 terminal, which displayed the text-based game in green characters. The college soon bought some IBM PCjrs and Walter was given access to a BASIC compiler, which he used to write a completely new MS-DOS version in QuickBASIC. He quickly added the auto-clear feature and the ability to choose the number of mines. The game was shared with friends at college, with people taking copies on floppy disks home for the summer. More features were added as people requested the ability to mark mines and replay lost games.

The name "Wizard Workshop and Company" was based on his room, which was littered with computers and books, and his love of D&D. The "company" was two friends, an artist and a writer, with whom he brainstormed game ideas.

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