Ian Heath wrote a 'Minefield game for Windows 3.0' in 1990 while studying at the University of Southampton.

The player starts in the top left corner with a guaranteed opening and must find a path to the bottom right corner using number clues to avoid mines. The grid is 16*16 with 30 to 160 mines. You mark mines with a bomb icon using the right mouse button and mark potential mines with an OK icon by clicking the right mouse button twice. The cursor icon is a pair of footprints, and although you can click on any previously opened square you must walk onto new squares from an adjacent square. There are no highscores.

Version 3.0 was released with source code. A function called 'CanWeDoIt' checks if the game can be solved. Shareware price was $10.

Version 4.0 introduced the option to have 1, 2 or 3 lives. It was bundled with two card games by the same author (Arachnid, Towers) for a Shareware price of $15. A spelling error was introduced in the Win notification of 'Congratualtions'. There appear to be two releases of Version 4.0 with the first being an individual release and the second as part of a SP Games Pack 1.2 release. The only difference is the About notice and the two additional games.

Version 5.0 added another card game (Montana) and released Mines as part of the four game 'SPS Games Package'.

Heath was inspired by the Macintosh game Mines (1988) by Griscom. Windows 3.0 had been released in May 1990 and he used the same grid size, default number and maximum number of mines, bomb icons and OK graphics. However, instead of using [SHIFT][Left Click] to mark mines he changed this to a [Right Click]. The original Mines game was written in FORTH and Heath wrote his own code in C. The version is 3.0 because Windows 3.0 was released in May 1990.

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.