Video games are regularly patched, tweaked, and modified to the point where the original experience is lost for better or worse. For Minecraft, that original experience is being resurrected to help celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary.
Posting on the Minecraft website, Tom Stone, creative communications assistant at developer Mojang AB, announced the launch of Minecraft Classic. It’s the original game, which provided players with, “just 32 blocks to build with, all the original bugs, and an (inter)face only a mother could love.”
What Mojang and Microsoft is offering us is the opportunity to “go back to a simpler time.” They’ve also made it incredibly simple to start playing as no downloads are required. Minecraft Classic loads in your web browser and is fully-playable without need of anything else.
If you decide to give it a go, remember this is Minecraft from 2009 when developer Notch released the first public version on May 17. The crafting system didn’t arrive until 2010, as did a whole host of other features including dungeons, bricks, slimes, and chickens. So expect a very pure and simple experience, which is worth diving into at least once. It’s sure to surprise anyone who’s only played modern Minecraft.
Further Minecraft 10th anniversary celebrations are planned including a sale and free bonus gift on May 10. There’s also an all-expenses paid trip to the Minecraft MoPop Exhibit in Seattle, Washington up for grabs. All you need to do to enter is post a video on Instagram with the tags #Minecraft10Years and #contest that answers the question, “How will you celebrate Minecraft turning 10?”
For anyone who enjoys revisiting games in their original form, this summer we’ll get to experience another as Blizzard is set to release World of Warcraft: Classic for a hit of MMO nostalgia.
