Long-Lost Minecraft Alpha v1.1.1 Found After More Than A Decade!

There is no doubt that Minecraft has become a phenomenon. With over 126 million monthly players in 2020, this 12-year-old game is still going incredibly strong. Minecraft's developers roll out updates for the game using a versioning system with additions and bug fixes, both major and minor, being added incrementally. Some of these versions have become obscure, rare, and highly sought after throughout the game's over-decade-long run, the most coveted of all being Alpha Version 1.1.1.

This Alpha version, released initially on September 18, 2010, was only available for 3 hours and 25 minutes due to a promptly patched visual bug. Archivers considered this version of Minecraft lost media due to this tiny window of availability and the span of time since release; until now.

Screenshot of Minecraft Alpha v1.1.1 from Minecraft.Fandom.com

Back in 2010, Twitter user @lunasorcery tweeted, "oooooohhhhhhh MineCraft update!" The time that she tweeted her excitement for the new update appeared to have lined up with the release window of this sought-after update. Seeing this, multiple users decided to reach out and see if she could search through her old files to find the long-lost Alpha Version 1.1.1, the Holy Grail of Minecraft updates.

After more users continued to inquire about these files, Luna finally searched through an external USB drive where she found a Minecraft.jar file from, you guessed it, September 18, 2010. After some investigating, she confirmed that this file was the elusive Alpha build everyone was seeking for over a decade now. Fans and archivists rejoiced after moderators of the Omniarchiver Discord server, a community of internet archivists, confirmed her findings.

To read more into this fascinating story, check out her thread detailing the timeline of events leading to this exciting discovery. Additionally, she has listed the game files for you to download and try out yourself!

As the internet continues to age, it is interesting to see how game files become artifacts worth seeking out. As we shift toward cloud-based gaming services, finding local files for outdated games and their versions may become harder and harder to do! Only time will tell, but hopefully, developers and archivists will take steps to preserve digital history, or else intriguing instances like the one detailed above may become fewer and far between.