The Forgotten Games That Led To The Creation Of Minecraft
From games helping give ideas, to textures being repurposed for other games. Every game has something that inspired, or assisted in its creation, and Minecraft is no exception to this. Today we want to break down the forgotten games that led to the creation of the greatest game in video game history, to take a look at what inspired Markus Persson (aka Notch) in his journey with Minecraft.
ZombieTown: The Birth of Steve
It turns out that the muscular cuboid man that we all know and love as Minecraft Steve is actually not from Minecraft, but from an unreleased game that Notch made in February 2009 called “ZombieTown”. This game wasn’t even released, but the player model ended up being used for Minecraft as Steve a few months later. Notch realized that this player model fit perfectly into the blocky style of Minecraft, and it ended up becoming a beloved character by everyone years later.
Legend of the Chambered 2: Iconic Textures
Legend of the Chambered 2, created in 2008, contributed significantly to Minecraft by creating some of the game’s most iconic textures and fonts. It used the classic font that’s commonly found in Minecraft all over the game, and created textures like the apple, leather armor, iron armor, chainmail armor, and the iron sword. The game is responsible for the creation of some of the most recognizable elements in video game history.
Infiniminer: The Inspiration for Minecraft
Infiniminer, developed in April 2009, was a cube-based mining game that directly inspired Notch to create Minecraft. Despite Infiniminer only lasting a few months, it’s ended up being incredibly impactful to the gaming industry. No Infiniminer = no Minecraft, which means millions of people never would have gotten into gaming in the first place. Even if you’ve never played it, it likely has had some kind of influence on your life without you realizing.
RubyDung: The Birth of Minecraft
RubyDung, meaning ruby dungeon, was another game that inspired Notch in the creation of Minecraft. Notch had wanted RubyDung to have first-person and isometric viewing styles, but he found that when testing this out the textures become distorted and blurry up close, so he scrapped the idea. But after seeing Infiniminer, he realized that its style would fit a lot better with the gameplay he had planned for RubyDung. This is how the first version of Minecraft, known as “cave game”, was created.
While the games in this article may not have affected you at all, for a lot of people, Minecraft might’ve. And it’s important to remember what led to its creation, which is why we made this article in the first place.
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