Minecraft Wiki:Projects/Wiki videos/Missing Java Edition versions

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Throughout its existence, the original Java Edition of Minecraft has been in a state of near-constant development. Ever since late 2011, game versions have been saved to Mojang Studios' cloud servers and have remained freely downloadable to the current date. However, before this point, when the game was updated, the jar file for the game was replaced on-the-fly, outright deleting the older game version. Due to this handling, many old versions have become lost to time, with no way of playing them and with very limited knowledge of their behavior and significance.

A common misconception within the community is that the launcher allows any version of Java Edition whatsoever to be played. Unfortunately however, this is simply not true, as while close to all versions from after the official release and a reasonable amount of versions from prior to the official release are accessible from it by default, a large number of versions are also completely absent from it - notably, absolutely no versions from the Indev development phase can be found within the launcher's list of versions by default. Many versions like these have been archived by dedicated teams and are available for download on the wiki like other versions, however there are further versions that yet still elude the community to this day.

This video will list all of the versions which we have screenshot or video proof for. A more comprehensive list of missing versions, including those whose existence is inferred by blog posts and IRC archives, can be found in the wiki article linked in the video description below. link to main can be found above

If you believe you are currently in possession of a copy of one of these versions, we recommend that you visit the wiki page of the version in question, and then visit its Talk page which can be accessed by the tab at the top of the page, and start a discussion regarding your findings.

Any versions listed in this video which are subsequently found will yet again be listed in a dedicated section of this video's description, so be sure to check that for any updates in archival efforts.

one more thing for the description: link to any videos sampled for footage, and any screenshots if possible (check the file page for credits, or ping me in discord if you want me to ask for image credits if you want to use one)

Screenshots provided can be cycled through during commentary/interpolated with video clips

Classic[]

Firstly we have a classic version, entitled 0.0.9a. A perhaps tragic starting point, as this version is confirmed to be the subject of the very first Minecraft video uploaded to YouTube which wasn't by Notch himself, but rather by beta tester EvilVille. Unfortunately this video has been lost to time, and while the video page can still be accessed via the internet archive, the video itself cannot. Despite this, there are still four individual screenshots of this version, solidifying its existence.

archive page if needed: http://web.archive.org/web/20101227155640/http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=3XpSaBZchEs&feature=related

Our next missing version is a bit of an odd case, namely 0.0.11a. While it is true that the launcher has a version called 0.0.11a available for download, it does harbor a few anomalies. Files inside of it have modify dates from May 18th, despite 0.0.11a being released on the 17th. It is strongly implied that this version is in fact an early development version for 0.0.12a, given the presence of rudimentary multiplayer code which 0.0.11a should not have. As such, despite the fact that this version from the launcher looks and plays like 0.0.11a would, it is not truly 0.0.11a, and as such we can consider 0.0.11a to be another lost version.

Up next is a somewhat significant version: 0.0.12a, the version that introduced bedrock and the first liquids: water and lava, which have remained the only two fluids in Java Edition to date. This version is also currently out of our reach. Our only screenshot is from Notch himself though, so we can't truly confirm if the version was actually released publicly.

0.0.12a also had three subsequent, publicly released revisions, of which only 0.0.12a_03 has been archived. For 0.0.12a_01, we currently have only one screenshot.

Up next is 0.0.13a. The launcher also has a version with this name, but here the differences really start to get obvious. Footage exists of 0.0.13a with proper terrain generation much like its predecessors, but all the launcher version can generate is completely flat terrain, implying the launcher's 0.0.13a is an early test version solely for testing world size. However, that footage is again from Notch himself, and no other parties have published footage of this version around that time, so again we cannot fully confirm if its release ever actually happened https://youtu.be/66NmCgKhZ_A

0.0.14a is our next stop, with some more integral additions, such as trees, ores, and gravity-affected blocks. Once more, all videos and screenshots from 0.0.14a base are from Notch himself and screenshots from other parties have not been found.

https://youtu.be/CNeaH8JVRy8 https://youtu.be/qgwUhfMrpGA

0.0.14a also had its fair share of minor revisions, which were absolutely released to the public. Here, for example is 0.0.14a_03, with minor gameplay changes and fixes from the first major 0.0.14a version.

Possible screenshot

0.0.14a_07 is a further example of a missing minor revision, being the final missing version of 0.0.14a-kind:

0.0.15a is the first version released with functional multiplayer support after it started development back in 0.0.12a. Confusingly, there were several versions that shared the same name of 0.0.15a despite being distinct versions, and while one has been successfully archived, the others have not. On-screen is a screenshot believed to be of the second 0.0.15a version, where player animations were a bit too extreme:

This one is from another version of 0.0.15a we don't even know yet:

And the fifth 0.0.15a, where chat was first implemented:

Name tags.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780541568528285696/800350302154784798/0.0.15a_unknown_5.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780541568528285696/800350282100768788/0.0.15a_unknown_10.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780541568528285696/800350307317317632/0.0.15a_unknown_9.jpg http://i608.photobucket.com/albums/tt169/WhiteShock09/error.png

This one is from another version of 0.0.15a we don't even know yet:

To make things even more confusing, 0.0.15a eventually got properly named minor versions after the release of eight identically-named versions. Here, for example, is 0.0.15a_02.

Our next example is 0.0.16a_01, with one picture saved to date. The version itself doesn't have much to add outside of 0.0.16a's introductions, which is another missing version.

Our next exhibit, 0.0.18a_01, wasn't that major of an update, with a few odd bugs here and there as with any pre-alpha version.

The pixel art of ghost from Pac-Man
The pixel art of Mega Man

https://web.archive.org/web/20090619193801if_/http://uppix.net/8/4/0/e3e103a2eef550fb0c2fc15e80832.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20090619193758if_/http://uppix.net/9/1/f/ee3b9456c9fb15697bd09888d53bd.jpg https://youtu.be/robIDVtUC7I

0.0.19a, our next version of interest, is a somewhat more sought-after version than some of the others mentioned here, mainly due to it being the first version to introduce glass. If you look closely at the hotbar in these screenshots, and - while ignoring the wares indicated by the sign - the windows near the bottom of this shop building, you can see that it's almost completely invisible in the hotbar, and appears rather white and cloudy as a placed block. Due to the decidedly low quality of these screenshots, we haven't been able to decipher the appearence of glass in this version particularly well, which is why this version would be a particularly powerful asset in documenting the history of the Minecraft glass block.

0.0.19a also had a reasonable share of minor revisions. The original 0.0.19a is the only one that has the strange translucent glass texture, and the version displayed here, 0.0.19a_02, was the first one to introduce the glass texture used up to and including 1.13.2.

Here is a screenshot of it in missing version 0.0.19a_03, in all its glory. Here is another screenshot believed to be of 0.0.19a_03, as IRC logs have stated human mobs to be very glitchy.

Another version we are all yet to secure in our possession is 0.0.20a. This rather funny picture is all we have of it visually, but this was the version to gift us with gold blocks, the earliest iterations of colored wool blocks, and also flowers and mushrooms. Here's hoping that getting this version is very easy...

Next up in non-archived Minecraft versions is 0.0.21a_01. This version is an odd case, as the predecessor to this version, 0.0.21a, is one we already have. We have a comparable portion of media originating from this version, and it being the latest version for up to five or six days makes the fact it isn't archived yet all the more a mystery.

The Minecraft webpage with this version.

Our next unfortunate victims of time are the early revisions of 0.0.22a. Our first example, 0.0.22a_03, has only a single screenshot to its name.

0.0.22a_04 also evades our search parties - and the only remaining screenshot being a memorial makes its situation seem all the more troubling.

We now leave the realms of Creative Classic to set foot in Survival Test territory. As luck would have it, a copy of 0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST_03 has been found and is available to play, but its three predecessors persist just out of reach. Here's a video of the first one, showcasing an amazing glitch which provides you with a semi-legitimate way to get literal blocks of water in your inventory like any other item, a bug sadly patched in 03:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110413081716im_/http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/l7CA8n3bPr4/default.jpg http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c277/worbat/99red.jpg http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c277/worbat/99brown.jpg https://youtu.be/wH0AxeY_r2Y - show around the 1:25 mark at the last sentence, then to 2:08

0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST_01 came shortly after that version above. Let's hope that this version is more alive and well somewhere than this unfortunate player:

0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST_02 of course followed, with some more fixes and attempts at such.

https://youtu.be/mIXyCwc_iWo

The next version, 0.25 SURVIVAL TEST (yep, they dropped the underscores), has a bit of a smoky versioning system. We currently have 0.25_05 SURVIVAL TEST archived, but only four versions came before that instead of five, and they were all identically named. The likely reasoning for this can be found on the wiki page for 0.25_03 SURVIVAL TEST. That version is the only one we currently have footage for, recorded by former forum and wiki admin citricsquid. https://youtu.be/6NHN214GruY

The final missing Survival Test version, 0.26 SURVIVAL TEST, is an interesting one. Of the several videos of it, only one isn't from Notch himself, and is the video you are currently seeing on-screen. There is a common misconception that spiders in this version were brown - while spiders did indeed have a brown texture in early development, a build with this texture was never actually released. An in depth analysis and explanation for why this was concluded can be found on the wiki page for this version.

https://youtu.be/fwYeQu2N22g

0.28 this is a first version published after Survival test.

Indev[]

From this point until the beginning of Alpha, details are going to get a whole lot more hazy. The Indev and Infdev development phases didn't have a proper versioning system, so the top left of the screen can't be relied on like before. All we have to go off of is upload dates, paying close attention to mechanics, and comparing what footage and photography we have with change logs and the like.

Firstly we have collection of screenshots of a 1st Indev 0.31 version from December, 23rd 2009.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780540869744918538/844393026776203264/W85iS.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780540869744918538/844393018429145118/y0udp.png

We have a video of Indev 0.31 from December 31, 2009. This is implied to be the first of two builds from that date, given that the second version changed the default hotbar contents to a different pool of items.

https://youtu.be/Iv1eVCc7bH8

The next version to be showcased is the January 6, 2010 build, which introduced the traditional Indev world type options, finally defining this version as something separate from the Classic it grew from.

The next version is the January 7th build.

This next version is the January 9th build. The footage is believed to be from this version, as fire appeared invisible as an item here. As flint and steel was introduced in the next version, there would be no need to hack in fire items were that the version shown.

https://youtu.be/rprfKDp5lHA

Next, the January 11th build, which was the first to add fullscreen. pause, start this next sentence as the sampled portion of the clip comes to an end The January 11th build as well as some later builds had a hilarious bug where the breaking animation could be made to cycle through all the other block textures in terrain.png instead. Here it is showing the placeholder texture over stone.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780543847800373270/845118495574458398/minecraft1.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780543847800373270/845118480512450590/minecraft2.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780543847800373270/845118933265678346/minecraft3.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780543847800373270/845118477899399188/minecraft4.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780543847800373270/845118471565213737/minecraft5.png https://youtu.be/MeKSFUvEuRw https://youtu.be/SScJ4F54Zvg https://youtu.be/2Sk6RRYJBWo

The 13th of January has a lot more to unpack than last time. The main version introduces basic finite water mechanics as well as the ability to pick up multiple stacks of one item, although this version's implementation of it is somewhat glitched, but more intriguing is the other version, which is actually in creative mode This is the only appearance of creative mode between the second Indev version and the first Beta 1.8 prerelease.

https://youtu.be/A6-bszYJEOc

The 14th of January introduced the later-removed infinite water source block, and made water itself flow faster than before.

https://i750.photobucket.com/albums/xx146/robocop408/tweees.jpg https://i750.photobucket.com/albums/xx146/robocop408/shroom.jpg https://i750.photobucket.com/albums/xx146/robocop408/cliffs.jpg https://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/Ezimodnar/story1.png https://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/Ezimodnar/story2.png https://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/Ezimodnar/story3.png https://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/Ezimodnar/story4.png https://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/Ezimodnar/story5.png https://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/Ezimodnar/story6.png

The January 22nd version revamped bow mechanics, making arrows an actual item rather than a statistic, and changed the iron axe texture to use the infamous reversed axe texture.

https://youtu.be/ooirHlJorF8 https://youtu.be/JssMNidxwk8

Next is the first of two builds released on the 24th of January. This was the very first version to add chests to the game, and changed the iron axe texture to what it would be for the next eight years.

Two builds were released on the 4th of February, which made changes to mob pathfinding. The second also made changes to bows. Neither of these versions are archived.

The final Indev 0.31 version to mention in this video is the February 5th build, which introduced a hysterical bug with animal pathfinding. It seems that in this version facing direction and actual trajectory were completely desynchronized, resulting in this outrageous behavior as seen here.

https://youtu.be/RRUoo_Nqc-g

The final missing Indev version to mention in this video is from the February 11th build, which introduced a hysterical bug causing daytime to not go back to full brightness after one night.

https://youtu.be/9ZUQysClROM

Infdev[]

From this point onwards, the vast majority of Minecraft versions have been archived. Almost all significant versions of Infdev have been safely documented, but with a few odd exceptions. The build currently being shown is one of two builds released on the 27th of February 2010, and is in fact the first version of Infdev ever released to the public. The thing that makes this version stand out is that the brick pyramids that generate in this version can actually generate higher than the world nether limit, which results in the pyramids getting cut off and having this big flat spot on top, making it more like a brick square frustum than anything. A build from later that day is archived, which has the trademark brick pyramids, obsidian walls and deep blue sky this era is known for, but the brick pyramid bug is fixed such that they'll never get cut off. So as it currently stands, the Brick Frustum Infdev Build is one of very few missing builds from the Infdev era of Minecraft's development, and one we as the Minecraft community would very much like to have.

https://youtu.be/bFigFw17hXg

Alpha[]

Thankfully, the release of Alpha brought back actual version numbering, making defining lost versions a far easier task than it previously was. There's a reasonable number of these to go through before ending off this video, so we'll start off strong with Alpha v1.0.1, bringing with it the legendary debut of redstone technology. This one, being the third member of the Seecret Friday updates, is reasonably well documented, with a dedicated blog post alongside a small handful of screenshots, as well as a video by YouTube user LouisWasTaken allowing us to clearly see the new introductions from this version.

https://i906.photobucket.com/albums/ac261/Cassian_MC/Untitled-1.png https://youtu.be/7HZLzz13B6k

From a well-publicized version to one far more mysterious, next we have Alpha v1.0.2. This one is so elusive that Notch himself didn't mention it once, instead skipping straight to v1.0.2_01 for the announcement. This version is believed to have been the one to introduce the game changes announced for v1.0.2_01, so (reword?) having them be credited to the version directly after doesn't imply the most promising of release windows. We have two videos of this version, a mean redstone demo from TheWarlemming and a chilled minecart ride courtesy of norterrible, as well as a plethora of images from a greenhouse as shown at the start. show the remainder of the images An interesting thing you might notice about these images is that there are torches clearly placed on glass. It's not known if this version actually allowed for that by default, or if one of many block placement glitches were used to achieve this, but only obtaining this version itself will provide us all with conclusive evidence. show one or two of these images at the start:

show this video after the images, around the "Notch himself" part: https://youtu.be/HXujC4-mMmQ show a clip from the first half of this after the above video ends: https://youtu.be/aTkEb1akKcs

Now to proceed to a version which is more obscure still, Alpha v1.0.6_02 is so elusive that only three confirmed screenshots of it have ever been found - one of which is from a Total War forum and another one from a computer hardware forum from the Philippines. The Alpha phase of Minecraft is well-known for its many frenetic changes to leaf decay, and this version sits right in the valley between two different algorithms. While it worked well in Alpha v1.0.6_01, flaws in it appeared in Alpha v1.0.6_03, and it's not known if that version is to blame or Alpha v1.0.6_02 is, so finding this version would allow for this mystery to be put to rest.

Grand Cathedral source Boat source Dungeon Source

The next version, Alpha v1.0.8, was the version in which cows made their debut. This version did get a blog post, and has a small collection of associated screenshots. While this version did have the infamous quote-on-quote kazoo cow sounds, these would have been stored in an external resources folder rather than within the jar itself, and Alpha v1.0.8_01, a version that has indeed been archived, had these as well at the time. Nonetheless, Alpha v1.0.8 is still a lost version of Java Edition that would be a more than welcome addition to the community's collection.

Winter mode

Back on the trail of missing Seecret Friday versions, the next missing version is Alpha v1.0.17. This was the first version to add fences to the game, and either as a debug feature or out of the good of Notch's own heart, would give the player 64 completely free fences to use and abuse as they must. One of the only screenshots from this version originates from the Facepunch forums, which have since sadly shut down.

Archived forum post (can't see the image though?)

Also missing is the version right after, namely Alpha v1.0.17_01. Not much is known of this version, but it's believed that this removed the ability to get fences for free. Our only record of this version comes from an old reddit post.

Post on reddit Possible screenshot

The final version to mention in this video is a rather unique one. Before the official release of the Halloween Update in Alpha v1.2.0, a special early testing build was distributed to Tom Francis of PC Gamer and Michael Rose from Indiegames to showcase what features were to come in the update a few days later. The PC Gamer article as well as its associated videos are still up and accessible on the website, however the Indiegames article, while also still up, lacks images and the video, which, like with the 0.0.9a case, still has an accessible page through the Internet Archive but the video itself remains lost. This old version had some differences from the actual Alpha v1.2.0 that came out on Halloween as scheduled - glowstone dropped itself, zombie pigmen had the original proposed texture with implied blood, and the Nether was called the Slip. https://youtu.be/0Um6x9T-yRM https://youtu.be/NQGlB7EcvHM https://youtu.be/Pc2N0wckNn4 PC Gamer article (has screenshots) Archived version of indiegames blog post (more accurate, some details were lost in migration e.g. writer name became wrong) Archived page for lost video

This section needs expansion.

You can help by expanding it.

One of the last missing alphas, Alpha v1.2.1 is a very elusive version with only 2 proven screenshots. The so-called "Alpha v1.2.1" in the launcher is a mislabeled Alpha v1.2.1_01, so this version is very hard to track down. On top of that, this version was only out for about >20 minutes.

Visual bug.
Proof of existence.

Possible a1.2.1 screenshots: 1 2 3

https://youtu.be/YFLKZ4pWyAg

Conclusion[]

Remember that this video has only mentioned versions with third-party screenshots or videos, and doesn't count the very many versions mentioned in official blog posts, IRC logs, and various other places. We highly recommend that you visit our Missing Java Edition versions page to get the full picture and see the full list of lost versions. We'd also recommend that you share this video in order to spread the word on missing versions and make sure that as much of this game's history as possible can once more become freely accessible. With these versions getting older and older by the second, sitting on ancient hard drives threatening to crash, we want to make sure that these versions can once again stay secured in the grip of the Minecraft community.