"Minecraft" archivists are always on the lookout for old and rare builds.

More than a decade ago, a woman installed the then-latest edition of the game, a bugged version that was replaced less than four hours later. Back then, she didn't know how coveted that version would be- Minecraft Alpha 1.1.1.

Omniarchive Reaches Out to Twitter User 

Omniarchive, a group of archivists dedicated to archiving "Minecraft" updates, has been looking for Alpha 1.1.1, an old, bugged version of "Minecraft" that was only available for three hours and 25 minutes.

The Alpha 1.1.1 build had become somewhat of a holy grail, after years of searching, dead download links and leads that led to dead-ends. Omniarchive had never found it.

Then, a member from the group spotted Luna's tweet about a "Minecraft" update back in September 2010, the exact date that Alpha 1.1.1 came out.

oooooohhhhhhh MineCraft update!

— Luna (@lunasorcery) September 18, 2010

Omniarchive reached out to Luna through DMs after finding her tweet. They wanted to know if she had the rare Alpha 1.1.1 build. 

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How Luna Found the Golden 'Alpha 1.1.1' Version 

I look through the datestamps on the files to see if any are remotely close to what they're after.

Reader, I wasn't ready.

A file with the exact date they're after! Could it be? pic.twitter.com/fnwmFG3UVG

— Luna (@lunasorcery) June 26, 2021

Two seperate people reached out to Luna. At first, Luna didn't do anything about the DM, but the second time, she decided to check out her old files for the old "Minecraf" update launched years ago.

She booted up her PC, but couldn't find the backup. She has a "Laptop Backup" in one of her drives, but according to her, it wasn't anywhere to be found.

Luna thought about her old USB hard drive. She searched for it and plugged it in. The backup folder was there.

After putting a quick script to help with her search for the Alpha 1.1.1 build, she found something.

A minecraft.jar file dating back to when Alpha 1.1.1 was released is there in her folder. Now, this could be Alpha 1.1.2, released hours later, so Luna decided to unzip the file and grep it, searching the plain-text data for the version number string.

She found what she was looking for.

Bringing It to Light in the Omniarchive Discord Server 

After finding the coveted Alpha 1.1.1 build, Luna posted it in Omniarchive's discord server. The reaction was explosive and not long after, the moderators ushered her into a private channel to talk about it.

Luna sent them her findings, the build file, and it was confirmed. The Alpha 1.1.1 build that she found was the real deal.

Since the build was confirmed, someone checked the file modification timestamp of Luna's copy. It seemed that she had downloaded Alpha 1.1.1 a little under 2 minutes before Alpha 1.1.2, the fixed update, was compiled. That is quite the coincidence.

"Minecraft's" Alpha 1.1.1 build isn't the only gem Luna found in her folder. She said she also found another rare build only found in a modified state- c0.29 01.jar. Luna has now found two rare Minecraft builds.

In her thread about how she found this, Luna said at the end the moral of her story, "Never Delete Anything."

What is Minecraft? 

"Minecraft" is a 3D sandbox block game made by Mojang Studios. It was created by Markus "Notch" Persson, and made public in May 2009. The full release with Jens Bergensten as the developer was in November 2011.

It is notorious for being goalless, although having an  "official" ending that can be achieved. Even after accomplishing this, the player can still go around their world and continue to play.

There have been many updates since it became public, and not all of those were perfect. "Minecraft" Alpha 1.1.1 was only one of these.

Related Article: 'Minecraft 1.17' Update: Java, Bedrock Editions to Arrive for Caves and Cliffs Expansion Packs on June 8

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry