Java Edition Classic

Classic was the very second phase in the development cycle of Minecraft, following pre-classic and preceding Indev, and was the first Minecraft development stage to have some of its versions released to the public. This phase was commonly named "alpha" during its development until June 28, 2010, when a blog post retroactively labeled it as "Minecraft Classic". Creative and later Survival game modes were introduced in this phase.

The release of Survival mode in Classic was conducted in a series of tests named Survival Test. It was a very early version of the game mode. The test had a point-based system, where the player could acquire points from killing some of the game's first mobs. Even after Classic was phased out, Survival Test was still playable until the website received a major overhaul on December 16, 2010, where it was quietly removed.

Classic does not support many of the main features in the current versions such as crafting or a proper inventory. Indev through Beta 1.7 did not contain a "creative" mode, so players continued to use Classic for building things that would take too long in newer versions. The addition of Creative mode in Beta 1.8 rendered Classic functionality obsolete.

Early Classic

 * Bedrock
 * Water
 * Lava
 * New world terrain, featuring hills and lakes
 * Sand
 * Gravel
 * Coal, iron, and gold ore
 * Trees, logs, and leaves
 * Spawn point saving and reloading
 * New textures for wood planks and cobblestone

Multiplayer Test

 * Multiplayer, players now take the same model as human mobs previously in the Java Edition pre-Classic version.
 * Commands
 * Animated water and lava
 * Sponge
 * Glass
 * Block of gold
 * Red and brown mushrooms
 * Dandelion (known as "yellow flower" at the time)
 * Poppy (known as "rose" at the time)
 * Wool (known as "cloth" at the time) in 16 colors, including white

Survival Test

 * Players now start out with no materials in their inventory, and have to gather them
 * Picking up blocks
 * Humans can no longer be spawned by pressing G
 * Zombies and skeletons – can now spawn with armor
 * Health bar, damage, and dying
 * Signs
 * Pigs, which dropped mushrooms at the time and turned into creepers
 * Saplings grow into trees
 * Arrows, which the player spawns with a number of at spawn, and can use them throughout the game
 * Creepers
 * Spiders
 * Mossy cobblestone
 * TNT
 * Bricks
 * Block of iron
 * Obsidian
 * Bookshelves
 * Stone slabs
 * Sheep

Website availability
The latest version of the Classic Creative game mode was playable for free on Minecraft's website. After the release of Infdev it was no longer updated and only kept for historical purposes. According to Notch, he planned on "slowly phasing it out", but "won't remove it, though. Just hide it." It was playable in both singleplayer and multiplayer variations.

With the release of Beta 1.8 on September 14, 2011, Mojang removed the Classic resources directory and the addresses it was referring to for saving, possibly as a step towards phasing it out. As a result, sounds no longer worked and saving levels to the online server became impossible. Worlds that were not backed up locally were lost.

On August 8, 2012, the link on the website to Classic was removed, but re-added after many complaints. On July 1, 2013, because of the new launcher being able to play Classic, the link to Classic was removed again, though the page remained playable. The Classic game at that page went unsupported for some time, meanwhile, several major browsers increased their default Java security to the point where the game became essentially unplayable, until at some point between September 10 and 12 2015, the page containing Classic was itself removed entirely.

On May 7, 2019, a recreated JavaScript version of Java Edition Classic 0.0.23a_01 was made available to play on the Minecraft website as part of the game’s tenth-anniversary celebrations.

Trivia

 * Pre-Classic was originally named "Minecraft Alpha", but was renamed retroactively upon the release of Alpha.
 * The version numbers used during Early Classic Creative and Multiplayer Test are in the same format as Wurm Online, a game Notch developed from 2003 ( 0.0.#a ).
 * Prior to its removal from the website, player skins used for the full game were synced with Classic. Thus, custom skins could be used in both singleplayer and multiplayer versions of Classic for premium users.
 * In the Classic jar files, sprites for several mobs can be found. Playing a Survival Test map in normal Classic will preserve mobs, and also lets the player have multiple blocks of the same type (or none at all) on the hotbar.
 * Classic mode uses very old liquid physics, making it possible to flood the whole map with water or lava from just one block of the liquid.
 * Through the use of external tools, the Survival version of 0.30 can join servers running the Creative version. Mobs appear in different locations on each client (as they are not server-based), and attempting to perform most Survival-specific actions (such as detonating TNT) results in the player being kicked.
 * In Classic mode, the game world is not infinite. It is a cube made out of naturally generated blocks and surrounded by infinite water and bedrock (256 by 256 blocks).
 * The ocean surrounding the map would end at a certain point (not visible in normal play). This end depends on the render distance.
 * The file for 0.30 (both Survival and Creative versions) has 4 random brick textures in the middle of the unused section, and it also contains an uncentered side gold block texture in the lower left hand corner.