The Minecraft BETA 1.7 experience (classic Minecraft)

I tried the BETA 1.7 version of Minecraft from June 30 2011, which offers only the very basics of the modern game! It was an interesting experience anyone should try, however if not, below I noted major differences and interesting happenings.

Game play differences

• The main menu has the original, non-fancy dirt block background.
• You cannot go into forward F5, and can only see the back of the player.
• Food doesn’t stack at all (which gets interesting if you want to stock up)
• Instead of the eating animation, you obliterate the food in one bite!
• The terrain is very simple, with less features, and you can see the unnaturally generated wave shaped hills.
• Obviously, there’s just less everything, and especially less block choices.
• The main menu is much emptier – but the game is much smaller overall, so finally there is no lag in-game!
• Physics are a little different (i.e. the way dropped or thrown items feel).

Differences with mobs

• At night you will be absolutely overrun with zombies, creepers, spiders and skeletons (but especially zombies!)
• Zombies drop feathers upon death (I wonder where that idea came from?)
• Notch on Twitter — “The zombies drop feathers because I don’t know what they should drop, and chickens weren’t around back then!”
• Skeletons have terrible aim – maybe because of the way they hold their bows in the beta version of the game!
• I haven’t actually been to the Nether in this version, and the End didn’t even exist yet!

First night experience

(Click to enlarge images)