Minesweeper Game Downloads

Mines

MinesTool, XMines

• Year
  1987
• Strategy
  Find Path
  
• Platform
  SunOS || SunTools / SunView
  X Windows || X11 R4
  System V || AT&T Unix PC
  

Mines - Game Overview

Mines was written in 1987 for SunTools on SunOS by Tom Anderson. It was updated in 1987 by Brian Dalio with Jim McBeath adding features in 1988 before McBeath ported the game to X Windows in 1990. Several versions were also released for other Unix machines.

The original game was 16x16 with 20 mines. It was released for Suntools (later called Sunview) running on SunOS 3.0 although code confirms it was originally written for SunOS 2.2. The objective is to cross from the top left corner to the bottom right corner using number clues. Since you are walking across a minefield you can only move one cell at a time. Sun computers had 3 button mice so he used the left button to open cells, the middle button to mark cells as mines and the right button to mark cells as safe. The game ensures a path exists but does not guarantee no guesses! Your score is the number of moves but the game does not save highscores.

Brian Dalio updated the game in November / December 1987. Visited cells now remembered their numbers and at the end of the game all markings are still displayed. Incorrect mines are shown with an X. He added the ability to move directly to any previously opened cell and to cells marked "OK". He also added a Hint feature. Typing "H\n" into the subwindow marks an adjacent cell as "OK" if possible.

Jim McBeath updated the game in February 1988. He made it possible to move directly to any square next to an open cell. You could also right click in an opened cell to get a Hint.

Mines was modified in July 1988 for System V Unix by Timothy Lipetz and published to Usenet in October 1989:

Here is a port of a popular game on the Sun and Macs called 'mines'. I have added several features including guaranteed pathes, multiple soldiers, hand-grenades, chain-reaction explosions and scoring. It uses the graphics library on the unix-pc and so is machine specific, but if anyone wants to port these features to another machine, thats fine with me. Please check with the original author first (I'm sure he wouldn't mind either, but it is still a good idea.) Of course, preserve all credits in the current version. The new features allow play with a much higher density of mines.

Lipetz made every game solveable. The default game is 22x14 with 40 mines with 3 grenades set to the second difficulty level. The six difficulty levels have 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 150 mines. Like the original game, the left mouse button opens cells, the middle button marks cells as "Dangerous" and the right button marks cells as "OK". Your score is the number of mines multipled by 10 less 300 for each dead soldier and less 100 for each grenade thrown.

In December 1989 / January 1990, McBeath converted the game to X Windows and called it XMines. The default game is 12x12 with 26 mines but the grid can be increased to 100x100 if your screen is large enough. It was published for X11 Release 4 in September 1990 with a patch released in December 1990.

McBeath told this site in 2013 the game should run on modern versions of X Windows. For example, on Fedora 15 comment out board.c line 40 then type:

xmkmf
make
xrdb -load XMines.ad
./xmines

In October 1991, Kris Kugel wrote a patch to modify the Lipetz version to automatically clear openings when clicking on an empty cell.

Special thanks to Grem75 in 2021 for compiling and taking screenshots of XMines.

Version History

A list of all known versions sorted by platform then version. Email admin@ if you have more! See the Downloads section for available files.

Pictures

Screenshots are sorted by platform then version.

Mines 1.2 - Default gameplay (using XFree86 1.2 on Slackware 1.00)

Mines 1.2 - Information box (using XFree86 1.2 on Slackware 1.00)

Mines 1.2 - X11 screen with game in progress (using XFree86 1.2 on Slackware 1.00)

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Mines 1.2 - Default gameplay (using XFree86 1.2 on Slackware 1.00)

Mines 1.2 - Information box (using XFree86 1.2 on Slackware 1.00)

Mines 1.2 - X11 screen with game in progress (using XFree86 1.2 on Slackware 1.00)

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Downloads

Versions are listed by platform, version, year, earliest known date and source of the date information.

Credits

People and companies are listed by platform, version, name, role and source of the information.

Game Links

Dead sites are often available at archive.org.

Entity Links

Dead sites are often available at archive.org.