Locked chest

The locked chest was an April Fools block.

Breaking
When first introduced in Beta 1.4, locked chests were indestructible except to explosions, which allowed it to drop.

From Beta 1.4_01 up until its removal, locked chests were broken the same as normal chests.

Natural generation
In Beta 1.4, if the date is April 1st of any year, the game picks a random location to generate a locked chest in every new chunk. If the chosen location is air and has a solid block below, a locked chest will generate.

Usage


on the chest would bring up a screen, and clicking on the "Go to Store" button would forward the player to the "Minecraft Store". It linked to https://minecraft.net/store/loot.jsp. This shop was later removed, and now leads to the store to buy Minecraft. An archived version of this page can be found here. Various items were "sold" in the Minecraft Store (see below). Clicking on the proceed to checkout button triggered a screamer in which a Velociraptor from the movie Jurassic Park growled loudly and flew across the screen.

Entering items totaling over $10,000 into the cart caused a window pop-up asking if you are prone to seizures. Entering OK made the screen start flashing. When first released, there was no seizure warning label; Notch later implemented it to avoid lawsuits and posts on the forum.

On April 2 (the day following April Fools), the store had the addition of a multicolored banner which read "♥ April Fools'! ♥", accompanied by a MIDI instrumental of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. Tobias Möllstam stated that this was "the best script he's written to date."

The store page also used the font tf2build.ttf from Team Fortress 2 which is downloadable from here.

Items "sold"
Twelve "items" were "available":
 * Steve Co. supply crate key ($3)
 * Steve Co. supply crate key 5-pack ($18)
 * Miner's helmet ($21)
 * Name change ($99)
 * Creeper saddle ($42)
 * Secret griefer identity ($155)
 * Enlargement pill ($2)
 * Response from support ($494)
 * Three "coming soon" items (priced at $75, $7, and $1499)
 * Regular padlock ($8)
 * Used the same image as the "coming soon" items.

Fuel
Locked chests could be used as fuel, lasting 15 seconds (or 1.5 items).

Issues
Locked chests are a removed block and as such issues relating to them cannot be fixed.

Trivia

 * Locked chests are a reference to the Mann Co. Supply Crates from Team Fortress 2, where a key must be purchased for $2.49 in the in-game shop called Mann Co. Store in order to open the crate.
 * This may have been what Notch was talking about in his Twitter post about a "silly secret project".
 * Locked chests could generate in mid air or in the tops of trees.
 * Locked chests could be placed next to each other to form a 2 block long chest like normal chests do. These two chests are still however "locked".
 * The server console outputted "added a chest!!" each time a chest was generated.
 * The 5-key pack is actually $3 more than 5 single keys.
 * The archived page is available in reduced functionality here.
 * The locked chest's ID was named, and it is the longest named ID in Minecraft history.
 * When locked chests were removed, their numeric block ID (95) was re-used by stained glass, which meant that a world with a locked chest in would have it converted to white stained glass upon opening in the newer version.
 * , and the Minecraft website each have their own "Minecraft Store". However, they are actual in-game stores used to get downloadable content, purchase as well as Minecraft merchandise, and are completely unrelated to the April Fools' joke.
 * At the time of the locked chest being added into Minecraft, it looked identical to a normal chest. However, after Beta 1.8, when the chest model was updated to be smaller than a full block, the locked chest, a deprecated block at that point, remained with the old model, and as such became larger than an ordinary chest.
 * Booting up Minecraft Beta 1.4 with the date set to April 1st generates locked chests like normal. The functionality still remains (except the link is now invalid).
 * Unlike normal chests, locked chest luminates the world with a light level of 15. This was probably done to allow players to differentiate itself with normal chests.