The ULTIMATE Minecraft Retrospective

Minecraft is easily one of the most innovative, groundbreaking and successful indie games of all time. Being seen as not only a great piece of entertainment, but also effective enough to be used inside classrooms around the world. Today we'll be looking into every possible aspect of Minecraft, analysing it's development stages, and seeing how this small passion project ended up ballooning into a multi-billion dollar franchise.

[Lomainium]

Brother disappears for like 2 months and comes with a 5 hour minecraft video like- HOW DOES HE DO THAT AND WHY IS HE GOOD AT IT?!

[jackcouch]

Minecraft really scratches that itch in my brain that terraria, Skyrim, and new Vegas also do. It’s something to do with their atmosphere. You don’t really quit playing it. You just take long breaks.

[insertgenericusernamehere]

Minecraft and I don't say this lightly may have one of the most beautiful OST's in any game. There's something so beautiful, relaxing and charming about it's simplicity.

[ZeroNeedsCoffee]

One of the most underrated channels on yt. Legit thought this dude must have had like 100k subs then like an hour in checked and saw he has like 40k. Every video essay has so much work put into it. Like he made a 10 hour long gta video bro

[rainbsnd]

This video is absolutely awesome. My only critique is the use of the footage, I think you should only use footage from the version you're talking about, cuz it gets really confusing when you mix modern and old footage all the time.

[mr.nobodymc]

This game feels like a good old friend that you haven’t seen for a while but meet each other again in a bar 20 years after or something like that, what I’m trying to say is that this game has changed like the rest of us.

[unholyphish]

Since no one else has commented about it yet, I'll give a brief overview on why the older versions of the game don't have sounds on the modern launcher.
The sounds were (and still are) stored on a cloud server. The game doesn't actually ship with any of these files, and when you launch it for the first time it will ask this server for those files. Once the game has downloaded those files once it will remember them, but it will still ask the server for updated files every time you launch. This means that it will still have the files offline without internet.
The problem though is that this server that the game uses is hard coded into the game, and at some point in 2010/2011 this server changed and the old server no longer exists. This means that any version before alpha 1.2.0 is attempting to download files from a server that doesn't exist. It's been reported on the minecraft bug tracker for many years but I don't think Mojang are going to address it any time soon sadly.

TL;DR: Old versions of the game are coded to ask for the files from a server that no longer exists, so it won't have sound.
There may be some inaccuracies from my summary, but I'm going off of memory here.

There is a way to get around this, though it is 3rd party. Someone made a specific launcher called BetaCraft for minecraft versions before the 1.0 release and it includes a fix for this issue by using its own server for the files. I'd recommend using this launcher in general for any version of the game before the 1.0 release. (I'll also mention it has a mod browser for really old minecraft mods and newer mods that improve these older versions of the game. The UI is a bit clunky but it's better than nothing)

Edit: Forgot to mention BetaCraft oof.

[evanawesome]

"White man has been here" "How can you tell?" "Four hour video essay about minecraft"

[Dark]

this is what I always wanted, I wanted a really in depth retrospective on minecraft, I love how you go into detail to even the smallest changes like your hand appearing in the bottom right corner of the screen.

[juangutierrez]

I feel like you had such a good rhythm going on up until Alpha.

You were laying down each version and covering all the new additions.

Now the coverage is all over the place... Biomes, snow, nether, redstone. What's the order? Why did we lose the timeline?

Also, all the modern footage is making the talk about the past phases of development very hard to follow.

You had me for like an hour and a half.

[urfatherty]

most underrated channel ever. every video is beautifully crafted

[Acedafox]

old minecraft hits me with such immense nostalgia, its overdone but hearing those old tracks hits me like a truck of memories on the 360 with my dad and brother, calmer more serene times where i didnt even understand the meaning of stress. its immense and emotional how much those songs can send me back to another time. god i love the original minecraft soundtrack. the new stuff is eghc.

[TinyPrinceGames]

Just leaving a little constructive criticism because I think this video is good but I wish that you'd kept giving information about things happening in the background of Minecraft's development as it went on. Minecraft to me isn't just a single game but this massive platform, so a lot of this video ends up feeling like it's just going over information most players already know instead of really expanding out into the communal aspect, how it blew up the YouTube space, Mojang's buyout by Microsoft and Notch's departure, the game kind of falling off for a while until a massive resurgence, etc.

A lot of that stuff is just as, if not more, interesting as the game itself, and I'm sure with Minecon and dev blogs/interviews there's a lot of insights on the how and why of some features that would make for a much more engaging watch than just checklisting every feature in the game. The first hour or so of the video feels as if it gets that, and then just gets lost in talking about feature after feature that anyone who's played Minecraft even semi recently is already well aware of.

[soremuss]

Could never convince my friends to play Minecraft with me, they always went in with a closed mind due to the visuals. Shame, but i still enjoyed playing it like i had an addiction 10 years ago.

[therightfulromanemperor]

3:17:24 why did you put the squidward suicide jump scare there 😭

[justinlanglois]

Audio nerd here, I would like to mention that the audio mixing of this video essay is very good. A lot of youtubers get it wrong but here its good and consistent during all the runtime. Keep up the good work !

[deletedaccount]

Personally imo the ending text of Minecraft. . . Has been and always will the BEST way i have ever been told to go touch grass.

It's made even better when you have resource packs that play philosophical music as you read it.

[KingKaleb]

Back in the early alpha stages that sense of mystery and discovery in regards to crafting is what made the game so unique and interesting. I remember putting random blocks into the crafting section and accidentally discovering a new recipe. It was so satisfying after trying 10+ combinations then finally seeing something new pop up in the output slot. Then figuring out patterns and figuring out more recipes feeling like a big brain and having thoughts like “what if I tried making a furnace out of wood, woah a chest”. I’m not sure if the wiki didn’t exist yet or if I just wasn’t aware of it yet but it was a very unique feeling that I haven’t felt with any other game. Then when someone showed me the wiki with the crafting recipes I remember being blown away seeing how many things I had missed.

[OtrTrash]

Ladders solve a practical problem I frequently have with larger trees. Cleanup. Use ladders to climb up, then cut them down from the top to the bottom and the ladders pop off as you work your way down. It's quick, easy, and I don't have to remove scaffolding I built just to get up there or, god forbid, just leave floating tree tops around because it's too much hassle to climb up in the first place.

Ladders.

[pomuf_]

this channel easily has some of the best gaming video essays i've ever seen. criminally underrated