Preface: This review and rating is based on my playthrough of Minecraft version Beta 1.2_02.
Do you remember "the first night"?
I do, on a lot of different versions and a few platforms.
I'm doing something a little different this time around; because of how dedicated Minecraft's community is especially towards its preservation, I decided to "revisit" Beta 1.2_02.
I will be referring to beta versions as b, release as r, etc.
This version is notable for being one of the last before beds were added. In this version, there's no hunger bar, no sprinting, and no beds. There is no legitimate way to skip the night or move your spawn around. What's interesting about this is that it sort of makes the base game a little more tense, because the farther you are away from spawn the more dangerous it is for you to die. It means things as simple as wanting to find another biome are actually risky, and building a base far away from spawn even moreso. (you can just press F3 and write the coordinates down to your base, but still)
That's only part of the reason I'm revisiting this version, though; it's to re-experience that fabled "first night" that very recently many in the community are lamenting it as having "disappeared" from the game, spearheaded by personality YouTubers going as far as to say the game was ruined by this change. Originally people would point at when villages were changed to contain beds, but I guess they ran out of clicks with that one and now it's about beds in general. I could go on for paragraph after paragraph about why this is asinine but the only reason I'm giving it the time of day is because it's not entirely wrong. Because of no sprinting, if you get cornered by a skeleton, odds are it will prick you once or twice without much recourse from you, the player. Oh, hm. Actually that's probably the only example I can think of that's harder here outright. Huh. There's gotta be more, right? Let's take a look at what this version actually contains, before the gradual "destruction" of the game's "real challenge".
b1.2_02 has the following biomes (excluding those mentioned to be added for b1.3 and on), as well as the Nether in its most basic form; it does not however function correctly in multiplayer (that wasn't until b1.6). Interestingly, when it was announced it was advertised primarily as a means of fast travel; encouraging larger exploration with a bit of time commitment to synchronize portals with tunnels through the Nether. This would be its only real use case aside from collecting all three blocks that came with it for building (netherrack, soul sand, glowstone) and player-made challenges. If you look at the overworld biomes though, they tend to be tightly packed together, and a few are almost indistinguishable from each other; it's also interesting how despite there being two types of trees, they both drop the same wood. Charcoal was added in this update but it shares the same texture as coal and functionality, lapis was increased from 1 per block to 4-8, iron and diamond veins were made larger throughout the worlds. No new mobs with this update, just the classic Zombie, Skeleton, Spider, Creeper, Piglins and Ghasts to keep us company.
And that's it. It's quaint, really, but was only a stepping stone for many players' worlds before beds were in it and ruined playthroughs. Shortly after, long debate about the integrity of the game sparked, with the weathered Alphachads arguing for beds' removal while Betanerds advocated for their inclusion, claiming it greatly expanded the scope of the average player's world. Just kidding, this essentially never happened and everyone loved beds, people felt free to explore in more than just cardinal directions away from spawn instead of re-rolling seeds over and over for a funny mountain near the world spawn.
So what was my playthrough of this like, let alone "the first night"? I gotta say this version is genuinely difficult, but not for the reasons you might expect. Remember, this pre-r1.9, spam click combat is a free wall against several mobs at once; this is also early beta, so the pathing on mobs was still terrible. Hitboxes are also jank, the only time I came close to dying was when I found a spider dungeon and one of them was hitting me nearly a full block away (played on Hard). Day 1, built a shelter, made torches; no afk in caves for me! Night 1, did some mining, barely found anything, tried to loot the spider dungeon; return to surface, watch the sun rise. Day 2, I get more wood and go slaughter a dozen pigs to get stacked with instant 4 heart healing, then come back to mine more. Night 2, found diamonds. Day 3 / Night 3, made it to the nether and made a safe portal shelter on the other side. Total time spent: 1-2 hour.
So what's actually difficult about this old ass version of the game? No shift clicking in item menus, and I'm serious. The lack of a proper creative mode still also bothers me, as someone who early on had a pretty evenly split amount of time between survival and creative.
I adore Minecraft, and I understand having nostalgia for aspects of it (back then I played on the ridiculously restricted Pocket Edition Alphas, which had no smelting, nether, "proper" crafting, and only 256x256 worlds when I started!!); but to remotely imply these versions is where the game peaked in almost any capacity is utterly ridiculous. If you want stakes, you play Hardcore on current release where enemies during the day can one-shot a naked player, phantoms chase down those faster than they can run in the night, and the new Warden can bring a player down to half a heart in full Netherite armor.
I think (Vanilla) Minecraft players are just getting bored/burnt out and running out of things to make clickbait videos about. To gush about any mods worth mentioning is to gush about mods made in a post-beds world, and that wouldn't fit the current narrative. If you made it to the end of this ramble, thank you. Goodnight.
Some of my favorite pieces of the Minecraft OST:
Beginning
Haggstrom
Sweden
Aerie
The End
Truthfully there's very little of the OST, both old and new, I'd ever skip.
Do you remember "the first night"?
I do, on a lot of different versions and a few platforms.
I'm doing something a little different this time around; because of how dedicated Minecraft's community is especially towards its preservation, I decided to "revisit" Beta 1.2_02.
I will be referring to beta versions as b, release as r, etc.
This version is notable for being one of the last before beds were added. In this version, there's no hunger bar, no sprinting, and no beds. There is no legitimate way to skip the night or move your spawn around. What's interesting about this is that it sort of makes the base game a little more tense, because the farther you are away from spawn the more dangerous it is for you to die. It means things as simple as wanting to find another biome are actually risky, and building a base far away from spawn even moreso. (you can just press F3 and write the coordinates down to your base, but still)
That's only part of the reason I'm revisiting this version, though; it's to re-experience that fabled "first night" that very recently many in the community are lamenting it as having "disappeared" from the game, spearheaded by personality YouTubers going as far as to say the game was ruined by this change. Originally people would point at when villages were changed to contain beds, but I guess they ran out of clicks with that one and now it's about beds in general. I could go on for paragraph after paragraph about why this is asinine but the only reason I'm giving it the time of day is because it's not entirely wrong. Because of no sprinting, if you get cornered by a skeleton, odds are it will prick you once or twice without much recourse from you, the player. Oh, hm. Actually that's probably the only example I can think of that's harder here outright. Huh. There's gotta be more, right? Let's take a look at what this version actually contains, before the gradual "destruction" of the game's "real challenge".
b1.2_02 has the following biomes (excluding those mentioned to be added for b1.3 and on), as well as the Nether in its most basic form; it does not however function correctly in multiplayer (that wasn't until b1.6). Interestingly, when it was announced it was advertised primarily as a means of fast travel; encouraging larger exploration with a bit of time commitment to synchronize portals with tunnels through the Nether. This would be its only real use case aside from collecting all three blocks that came with it for building (netherrack, soul sand, glowstone) and player-made challenges. If you look at the overworld biomes though, they tend to be tightly packed together, and a few are almost indistinguishable from each other; it's also interesting how despite there being two types of trees, they both drop the same wood. Charcoal was added in this update but it shares the same texture as coal and functionality, lapis was increased from 1 per block to 4-8, iron and diamond veins were made larger throughout the worlds. No new mobs with this update, just the classic Zombie, Skeleton, Spider, Creeper, Piglins and Ghasts to keep us company.
And that's it. It's quaint, really, but was only a stepping stone for many players' worlds before beds were in it and ruined playthroughs. Shortly after, long debate about the integrity of the game sparked, with the weathered Alphachads arguing for beds' removal while Betanerds advocated for their inclusion, claiming it greatly expanded the scope of the average player's world. Just kidding, this essentially never happened and everyone loved beds, people felt free to explore in more than just cardinal directions away from spawn instead of re-rolling seeds over and over for a funny mountain near the world spawn.
So what was my playthrough of this like, let alone "the first night"? I gotta say this version is genuinely difficult, but not for the reasons you might expect. Remember, this pre-r1.9, spam click combat is a free wall against several mobs at once; this is also early beta, so the pathing on mobs was still terrible. Hitboxes are also jank, the only time I came close to dying was when I found a spider dungeon and one of them was hitting me nearly a full block away (played on Hard). Day 1, built a shelter, made torches; no afk in caves for me! Night 1, did some mining, barely found anything, tried to loot the spider dungeon; return to surface, watch the sun rise. Day 2, I get more wood and go slaughter a dozen pigs to get stacked with instant 4 heart healing, then come back to mine more. Night 2, found diamonds. Day 3 / Night 3, made it to the nether and made a safe portal shelter on the other side. Total time spent: 1-2 hour.
So what's actually difficult about this old ass version of the game? No shift clicking in item menus, and I'm serious. The lack of a proper creative mode still also bothers me, as someone who early on had a pretty evenly split amount of time between survival and creative.
I adore Minecraft, and I understand having nostalgia for aspects of it (back then I played on the ridiculously restricted Pocket Edition Alphas, which had no smelting, nether, "proper" crafting, and only 256x256 worlds when I started!!); but to remotely imply these versions is where the game peaked in almost any capacity is utterly ridiculous. If you want stakes, you play Hardcore on current release where enemies during the day can one-shot a naked player, phantoms chase down those faster than they can run in the night, and the new Warden can bring a player down to half a heart in full Netherite armor.
I think (Vanilla) Minecraft players are just getting bored/burnt out and running out of things to make clickbait videos about. To gush about any mods worth mentioning is to gush about mods made in a post-beds world, and that wouldn't fit the current narrative. If you made it to the end of this ramble, thank you. Goodnight.
Some of my favorite pieces of the Minecraft OST:
Beginning
Haggstrom
Sweden
Aerie
The End
Truthfully there's very little of the OST, both old and new, I'd ever skip.
4 Comments
I'm not one to act like Minecraft versions aren't immune to criticism, but I agree with the sentiment that discussion is circumventing the details on what's going wrong with each new snapshot or release, and more that people (understandably) prefer the iterations of the game that they're more familiar with. Which, ya know, is fine and all, but it's soiling the bed in regards to improving on things.
That was a cool read, I'd love to see you put out more about updates in general, even though I don't particularly like Minecraft.
Agree with @Dadhunter , no pressure but its interesting to see people cover different patch versions of games. I know one of my favourite private discussions with you was how early elden ring and patched elden ring play balance wise. You have a great eye for that side.
LordDarias
1 year ago