Minecraft Beta was WEIRD…

Minecraft Beta is extremely weird. It was released over ten years ago and it was a pretty turbulent time for the development. Things were moving fast. But what Mojang doesn’t want you to know, is that you could milk squids. There was lots of strange things about this version

And I’ve picked specifically Minecraft Beta 1.2/b. Squids had just been added to the game. And they’re extremely difficult to get out of the water. For some reason they would swim all the way to the bottom and there was no real way of seeing anything when you got down here.

And you had to fishing rod them out bit by bit. And when you did, they don’t even suffocate. But for one short version, you could do this. If you got the angle just right… [laughs] You could procure some milk. Why did they think that this was a normal thing?

I know it’s a game in Beta but this is not normal! Especially as milk only had the use of making cakes. Theoretically, you could have a bucket of milk if you update it from Beta all the way to today, you could have a bucket of genuine squid milk.

Possibly the rarest item in Minecraft. But that’s not all, Beta has a whole bunch of things that would make us modern Minecraft players say “eh?!” And I’m not just talking about the fact that porkchops didn’t stack and they look suspiciously like steak. Your inventory looked a lot like this.

No and I’m not even talking about the fact that all woods: birch, spruce or oak just turned into oak planks. No, what I found really strange revisiting Beta was boats. For a long time, boats were just the bane of every Minecrafter’s existence. They were slow, clunky, didn’t work very well, turned extremely slowly

But what you might not have known is that you couldn’t actually get out of them. You were a prisoner in these tiny, wooden boxes. Observe. If I crouch, I just do the boat wiggle. Ten years ago, if you and your friend were in boats,

You just did the boat dance at each other. So how did you get out of these things? Well, you could crash them and they’d break or you had literally had to break them. And they drop as wooden planks and sticks! Ah, boats were the worst. Excuse me while I drink my squid milk.

[gulps] Minecraft Beta was like an entirely different game. The combat mechanics were extremely primitive where you could just see how fast you could spam your sword. But something you might find extremely weird is the Minecraft bow. There was no limit to how many arrows you could fire.

The only limit was how fast you could click. If you held down your right button, you’d fire rapidly. But if you decided to click, it was like a machine gun. Obviously, this was the most broken mechanic in the entire combat system. We think combat today is a bit off. Watch this.

Minecraft Beta might have been weird but it was also a much slower pace and had a certain kind of magic about it when that Minecraft music hit. But annoyingly, now I have to wait for the entire night to pass by. There’s no beds in this version. We got to wait. [MUSIC]

[player “oo” sound] Aah! Waah! No this is fine, this is fine! In Beta creepers were extra scary because they made even less sound than they do today. In fact, I don’t know if they make a sound at all apart from when they’re exploding. [creeper explosion]

Ten years ago, I used to prank just as much as I do today but our options were much more limited. Now back then we were able to create fences… Ah… There’s no crafting recipes and I… can’t remember how to make a fence. Yeah, there was no crafting recipes whatsoever,

So I’ve had to look up how to make a fence. Back in the day there were tutorials on Youtube, actual videos on how to craft things because there was just no way of knowing. Okay. So there was a very interesting bug back in the day where you could use a fence

And we need to wait for day again. We’ll be back for you in just a second. [MUSIC] Ahh. Oh I can’t- WAAHH!! Eh! [laughs] Oohh! Okay, I think I’m going to have to make those fences again. So [laughs] back in Beta fences were pretty weird, you can see the outline

Of the fence here. These are technically 1.5 blocks tall and for whatever reason the game just couldn’t handle it if you jumped on them. Ah. I swear to you, this bug did exist at one point I think it might be multiplayer only but I can’t get it to work.

Instead, this is what walking looked like in Alpha. Personally I think Minecraft has evolved backwards. Another thing you might find strange back in the day was chests were just full blocks like this. And you might have even seen those cursed Minecraft images. But this was a chest. No animation, solid block,

Much like a barrel is. And you might have seen those cursed images like this. Where you get a weird chest perspective. Is it 3D or is it not? Now furnaces had absolutely no right being this difficult to mine. We used to just place furnaces over everyone’s bases

Because they took so long to mine. And also you got to remember to take stuff out of the furnace because if you didn’t… Excuse me. Gone forever. Not everything that was weird back in Beta had to be significant. There was even small things like when you made staircases they just didn’t render properly.

Or when you made a slab using cobblestone, they were a completely different texture. So this is a cobblestone slab. And it’s night again. I’ll see you in a few minutes. [MUSIC] So although they looked weird, they also had very strange properties. For example: a staircase well, they didn’t connect at all

And they took a very long time to break and then they would turn into a single cobblestone block. Yeah, this was just normal. All of these things were normal. And you couldn’t place slabs at the top of blocks, always on the bottom. So I think it’s very fair to say

Without the immense amount of updates that we’ve had over the years Minecraft would not be as successful as it is today. I truly wonder how long this game would’ve lasted if it had remained in this unfinished state. So that’s it for a few weird things in Minecraft Beta.

If only someone had thought to make a series where you traveled through the evolution of Minecraft. Mmm. There’s a whole lot of nuances that have been documented all over Youtube but if you’ve enjoyed this blast from the past then please consider subscribing as it genuinely really does help the channel.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this video and I hope that you’ve enjoyed watching it. Thank you very much and good-bye!