You've never heard of these Minecraft versions. Why not? 

Of all the ARGs I've ever seen, this one is actually kinda interesting to me considering the authors are willing to go the lengths of making complete "old" alpha versions of the game just for people to dig around

I just realized This is the most elaborate mod showcase ever.

I love how there is no scary monsters or any actual threat and it's just some devs screwing around and trying to scare players, I actually felt more intrigued than scared.

The multiplayer version is the most insane to me because the camera being actively blocked proves, at least in my mind, that there was truly another player on the other end there, probably the ARG runner who had access to the server somehow. Really, really cool.

i love how this arg just destroys the common trope of herobrine-esque creepypasta by inserting a spooooooky shadowy figure from the beginning and then swiftly explaining that they're just the devs trolling

I love how much this feels like an actual version of old Minecraft. Old Minecraft has always felt kind of "off" to me, and I've always liked the vibes its given.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1549">25:49</a> RGN:"We hear a door open and close several times, although there is no door nearby" Player: *opens door*

Several times during this ARG I was wondering if I missed the memo and this was an actual version. That's how realistic it is. That's the sign of a fantastic ARG.

I think this is the most ominous and creepy way to pull off a video game ARG or anything meant to be scary. It isn't just gore on the screen, it's a demo that seems like lost game play that's JUST off. It's truly like entering another universe and it had me on edge the whole time, I love it

The first version where a shadow player was seen was Alpha 1.0.16_02, which is the same version where Herobrine was seen. That could mean the version unintentionally went public and the Herobrine was just another shadow player. I know this is just an ARG and Herobrine was just a creepypasta, but it´s so cool to see these stories overlap and give us somewhat of a backstory to Herobrine

This feels like a temporal leakage from an alternate universe where RubyDung was more developed before it became Minecraft.

I love how this doesn’t really have any jump scares, something args have a hard time staying away from

I really like how the versions slowly “mutate” in a way, looking less and less like Minecraft as the updates continue

these minecraft versions look like something i would see in a dream, like the textures look so weird but familiar and the new features are so random, like the crystals in the air and giant boss battles

This ARG stands out to me for one reason and that's "change" when you keep watching these videos the developers make the game unrecognizable meaning that the more features they add the less Minecraft is recognizable like it's slowly changing into something else

I... Actually loved those tracks,they have a weird style that appeals me somehow. Especially the drums in lemuria sounds like someone is hitting some random objects with the stick,and it doesnt keep going in set Intervals,it felt pretty random,kinda creepy but also exciting.

I like that the versions in this series are JUST off enough to feel eerie. They seem normal, but uncanniness is off the charts. It's scary without using horror/arg tropes.

Listening to the music from this version, I am very glad at the music C418 produced, if it had been slightly different minecraft could’ve been very eerie, even scary, compared to the relaxing and soothing music C418 produced

I think the notion of the hub world area is actually a really cool concept. Probably impossible to realize, but it'd be so awesome to be able to just slap a lever down next to a door and be able to hop into your friend's world, or even a complete stranger's world. People would have so many cool memories of making friends in the hub and building up each other's worlds. God, can you imagine?

Man the mystery I want solved is who the composer for all this is, I’d unironically listen to a fair amount of these tracks. Have some time stamps <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1255">20:55</a> Hidden Den <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1265">21:05</a> Lemuria <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1295">21:35</a> moon2 / fjord <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1311">21:51</a> Norway <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1331">22:11</a> Sadway <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1688">28:08</a> Ballroom Pianist <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1703">28:23</a> Nordic Sanctuary <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1933">32:13</a> R.O.S.T.R.U.M <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1946">32:26</a> Pattern Ponder <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1958">32:38</a> Faux Divinity

This has to be the most high effort Minecraft ARG I have seen in a very long time, if not ever. Huge props to the guy or people who run the ARG and channel.

That scene where the guy walks out behind his house and finds the "window" blocks had me so fucked up; a complete subversion of expectation and suspense, i've never been so had in my life. Top quality horror scene, this whole thing's nuts

I love the idea that this is all building up to the release of a full version of this alternate MInecraft for people to enjoy. It feels less creepy and more just plain interesting, and I'm here for it.

Part 2 has been released! Watch it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HYPf4ukXYlw.html

god damn this is so epic. people making what's essentially a series of mods of alpha Minecraft with multiplayer, new mechanics, and even an OST, for an ARG? this is legitimately incredible, hats off to the people behind this whole thing, whoever they are. and, of course, hats off to you, RetroGamingNow. your content is amazing and your coverage of this mystery is no exception. with such high quality, you deserve way more popularity than what you have now.

Another interesting Minecraft mystery. These recent Minecraft mystery explanation videos have been very interesting lately

you never expect this level of creativity from minecraft args but i am genuinely impressed with how in depth this is

This ARG must have taken a lot of effort to make. The amount of programming and worldbuilding required.

There's just something so creepy about the alpha days of Minecraft

The idea of taking something so long lost and forgotten like RubyDung and implementing it into an ARG of it's successor is a truly amazing concept to me

I actually enjoy the concept of doors to other worlds, it reminds me of how in terraria you can bring items from a world to another world

This is my favorite minecraft ARG, other people have mentioned it: it's super believable and interesting since it's just "devs trolling" and an alternate branch of MC development, but also the motives of the devs for doing everything is so intruiging, and the best part is how surreal and dreamlike it is to see the alternate version of minecraft. It literally feels like what you would see if you had a dream about the game, especially the iron doors leading to that trippy "hub world". Also, does anyone else think that the hub world is genuinely a really cool idea? I would love to have interconnected minecraft worlds, like a shared multiverse between me and my friends.

The early versions are so similar to Minecraft at the time they’re almost indistinguishable, but then over time it just gets more and more modified until it’s just a fever dream of random features. I wonder what the motivation is supposed to be for implementing these features

i dont know if im right,but i have the feeling that this minecraft (or rubydung) arg is based on norse mythology. from the almost nordic names of giants and chunks,the ost and the fact that most of the gameplay videos happen in snowy areas. hell even the wierd hub world tower,wich could be a reference to yggdrasil,which connects the realms (hubs) together. call me crazy but thats just the vibe it all gives me.

This is incredible dedication for an ARG A whole server, ties to Rubydung, anomalies happening to said server, new versions... I don't think I've seen a more immersive ARG outside of IRL ones (Bill Cypher Statue, Cicada or whatever)

What a ride. The way that the "new" versions are just off enough to be unsettling at the beginning, and it all flowing so well. I hope you make a follow up on this once we know more. I need to know more

Interesting fact: The title was changed from "The Story of AlphaVer: A Minecraft Mystery" to "What are the Minecraft Lilypad versions?" and then to "You've never heard of these Minecraft versions. Why not?".

This ARG actually made good music, and is acually pretty realistic. They even went out of their way to make a full on game.

That fact that they had to make a minecraft clone for an arg is truly incredible.

I keep coming back to this video just because of how much effort was put into both the series and this documentary. I love it

Honestly, the effort put into this is literal fire, imagine making a Minecraft ARG but then just to also make a standalone modded version of a Minecraft version for that ARG. Literal dedication

I have no idea why, but the most unsettling part of this whole thing is the sand texturing. It feels so cursed.

I believe the strange undulating thing that DJP uncovers is a cube-shaped item drop that is colliding with the slab he's standing on top of. The rotation of the item drop causes the effect as one corner rotates around and disappears into the slab, the opposing corner is revealed. The darkness of the item seems to back up this theory too.

Hands down the most interesting Minecraft ARG i’ve ever seen, goes to show you don’t need to go paranormal with your story to make it scary

The people who worked on this ARG deserve more respect. THEY MADE A LITERAL SOUNDTRACK

I love the texture changes! They look eerie and uncanny! It kinda tickles a specific part of the brain, since you are so used to the original textures. Especially the furnace and the creeper. Those really make me feel something weird.

i love how authentic this all feels, esp the new textures. it has the style of og mods like twilight zone, which makes the whole thing so much more believeable and a little nostalgic

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1793">29:53</a> The second text message I believe is latin. I do not speak fluent latin, but using google translate (which isn't very reliable) can give some answers. Having the text run through google translate, the original latin (lorem ipsum dolor sit amet) loosely translates to "the internet itself is a pain". (of course, this may mean nothing, as latin is sometimes used as fluff)

What I really like about this ARG is how believable it is. Usually ARG's go off the rails with alternate dimensions, God's or creators or sentience in the game, but this is downright realistic. With all the weird ideas Notch and Mojang we're throwing around at the time, a hub world connected by random doors seems like the kind of thing they would try. The random boss and chunk names also seem like something, esspecially if they took Minecraft down a slightly more rpg route than they did. It being developed by a separate team, whether within or outside of Mojang also seems reasonable, esspecially with the forked versions and admins recruiting. Such a compelling yet grounded base, sprinkled with a little bit of mystery, even if there is very little "game" or it is already complete, the idea itself is just really intriguing, especially to a nerd like me.

I thought "oh great, another shadowy figure scary story" and then it got really good, like, i legit could've believed all of this some years ago, all the detail to make it credible amd realistic is amazing

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="797">13:17</a> “the developer builds several upside down T ‘s in the world” that line made me laugh so hard💀

Really goes to show how much sound and formatting affects the tone of a video. Inherently this isn’t a very creepy ARG, it’s really just like a hypothetical story if RubyDung continued in production. Jesus christ it’s polished as fuck though

I love how this ARG sort of revives the feeling of old minecraft, and not knowing what is lurking in the games code, or what to expect.

I like to think this is an alternate Minecraft timeline, where at one point, the timeline diverges. I wonder what would 1.16.5 look like?

My favorite Minecraft ARG was the Mark101 ARG. Creepy, yet interesting. I think it could be a good movie.

the outro fills me with unfathomable amounts of dopamine, but for some reason, it only works when I watch the entire video. I love this channel, I'm subbing effective immediately.

I think part of the mystery lies in the fact that these were alpha versions, where how the textures (and the game itself even) was different than what we are used to today. Thanks so much and I look forward to your uploads Retro!!!

This explains the original herobrine image. And i honestly find it 1000 times more creepy to know that the devs were working on joining peoples private worlds and screwing around. This makes the initial tale of herobrine far more believable and a gazillion times more terrifying.

this ARG is honestly so creative and unique, the storyline of the behind the scenes aspect of it, the developers, and the secretiveness of the footage, makes it so spooky.

The intro to this video alone has made me watch it so far over 3 times

"The developer builds several upside-down Ts in the world" Oh, RetroGamingNow, you're so innocent!

We love them minecraft ARG! Why are they so good? I don't know but your coverage off them is equally comprehensive and fun.

I love how this is like gotta be one of the best arg Minecraft mods i’ve ever seen

all I have to say is that I love this ARG, it combines both the feeling of nostalgia and horror.

I really like how this story develops. The very beginning closely resembles the Herobrine myth with a creepy player hiding in the old versions of the game, but then it develops into this intricate and very elaborate ARG with actual game files where people got to interact with the people who made it. It's a great concept paired with excellent execution, and it's an interesting twist since stories like this tend to slowly embrace paranormal behavior as more information on the story is revealed. Flipping that sort of trope on its head by slowly becoming more and more believable (while still remaining unexplainable and mysterious) isn't easy, but it does so, and I love it.

At first, this honestly felt like a re-imagining of the story of Herobrine, with the initial video even resembling the Herobrine sighting screenshot. Things soon spiraled into something much greater and far more intriguing and I couldn't be happier for it.

Great video! I learned some cool things Btw you missed out on Minecraft Story Mode Season 2 (different game) Minecraft China, Minecraft Pocket Lite, and maybe some others but honestly that’s much it

This is a really good ARG. It's convincing. I love the inclusion of the jar files having support for the hosts of the ARG to join real player's worlds (which are actually servers) and play out things like what's seen in the videos

The custom blocks made for this ARG actually look pretty cool. I'd actually like it if that window block from when we see the "obstruction" guy and the hub world blocks were added to the official game.

Its always a good day when retro uploads

Oh now this is REALLY cool. I really like what they've got going here and the sheer amount of effort put into the presentation right down to using old operating systems is really freaking cool. Kudos to them

Yo bro your vids are actually fire, they got that sunnyv2 documentary style, and the old creepypasta one. And while it may be just satire, these vids are seriously addicting. Could you make a vid on the backrooms (like the original one, you can include the one with an unknown entity, however it just ruins the feel of the backrooms in my opinion) because with your voice, and your editing skills you could definitely make a banger vid on that topic.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2366">39:26</a> I'm thinking that maybe instead of just having random iron doors in the world that go to the hub, they wanted to spice it up by making it an actual structure so it was more recognizable so people would just be like "oh yeah that goes to the hub." it also probably be easier to find at that point. Overall this is a really cool ARG tho

By “distributing the jar” meant the way to join the server. Since back then the only way to do multiplayer was to modify the jar and distribute it.

Ngl, an extremely good ARG and it actually makes sense and connects to each other. Not like other ARG’s where the game is like, sentient or alive. The developers of the versions CHANGING the game itself makes actual sense.

Lemuria has an interesting tale to it. I remember in the youtuber Wendigoon’s conspiracy theory iceberg video (I forget which tier) he mentions a conspiracy about the reason for the gap in population distribution of Lemurs and the theory points to a sunken (or now underground) section of the landmass Pangea. There’s some stuff about hollow earth theories and giants and what have you but it’s interesting that this little easer egg makes itself known. It would be interesting to look more into that element of the ARG

There have been splits in Minecraft's development multiple times. 1.8 came before 1.7.9 and something between 1.8.3 to 1.8.7 came before 1.7.10. (At the time, I thought "Why update 1.7 further?")

some of that music in the jar preview was actually really good. the ambient background ones gave me some vaporwave/hypnogogia vibes edit: faux divinity is a BANGER

100% was expecting that "don't run unsafe JAR files" comment to transition into a sponsor

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="75">1:15</a> I like the attempt to create mystery around the phrase "distributing the jar"

You know what this series reminds me of? The Godzilla NES creepypasta. It has the same energy! NGC was a surreal version of the original G:MOM NES game, with new creatures and mechanics. AlphaVer is almost exactly like that! An altered Minecraft that has new mechanics and strange features, like the "chunk names".

Listened to this in the background while I was clearing out a Woodland Mansion in my singleplayer world and gotta say, it really did put me on edge lmao. I love all the footage made here, it really does feel like a weird, alternate universe version of Minecraft where development went in a completely different direction, but just enough is the same that you can tell what it is. Super cool stuff here

another concept id love to see as a mod

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="816">13:36</a> "The developer builds some upside-down Ts." We all know those are not upside-down Ts.

Nice to see you back, I missed your uploads. Just want to say that the Alpha versions are so odd, the game is recognizable but still so primitive, a perfect place for anomalies like this.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="593">9:53</a> <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="713">11:53</a> Regarding the Shadow, I went on Wayback machine to see the old update logs, but instead I went to the development blog and in there was a Bug Update #3. This bug update is from November 30. 2010. In it is written : ,,* Fixed dead players logging in as invisible ghosts.” And that might be what happened in the video.

The whole interconnected hub thing with the doors is actually such a cool idea lol

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1183">19:43</a>, If you're worried about a program being malicious, you could also use a virtual machine as an alternative.

This gives me Super Mario 64 and Zelda 64 beta vibes. They feel so similar yet so alien compared to the final versions. The Super Mario 64 Iceberg feels like these alternate Minecraft Alphas, an eerie dreamlike version of the main game. There’s nothing horrifying to explicitly point out, but the uncanny nature of unfamiliar parts of the game gives it all a creepy undertone

this video showed as 12 minutes long in the recommendations sidebar. I was playing with some puzzles while listening and didn't look at the clock, turns out I'm 20 minutes into a 47min long video. Definitely gonna finish this later :3

is there a way you could add all the song files to spotify? that would be so cool! i made a playlist with all the minecraft songs and i feel like it wouldnt be complete without these. also seriously no one has commented since my other ones 8 months ago cool and yeah i love it its so awesome with the whole mystery and whatever. keep up the good work

One thing of note: The ammount of shadow players that joined the server that the Discord users set up... It's a LOT of people, many more than the original 7 devs.

I guess it's also worth noting that outside of this ARG, the only thing notable about Minecraft Alpha 1.0.16_02 is that it was the version that the original fake Herobrine screenshot was taken.

Love this mystery is there a pt2 planned?

I don't know if it was intentional, but some of the retextures are just terrifying to me. The furnace, oak door, and iron door in particular just give off this sense of pure dread. They're just so.... wrong

I hope the conclusion of the ARG isn't the boring cliche of "Oooooh the final version is spooky and cursed because they were setting up the game to summon a Sumerian demon oooooh" or "Oooooh the lead developer has trauma and they make the game creepy on purpose oooooh". IMO it'd be much more interesting if the backstory behind this was both not supernatural in origin and not just "Petscop/Catastrophe Crow but blocks". Already, the fact the shadow entities are specifically meant to be players and not some off-brand Herobrine caught my attention. As for my theory, if the ARG really goes the route of no supernatural business, maybe the dev team that runs Minecraft Lilypad is into some illegal stuff. If a company was doing closed playtesting they would, for one, have a much less intrusive way of recruiting players, and secondly, would be issuing NDAs to said chosen players, instead of listing rules without any legal backing as if it all were just some run of the mill Minecraft server. The fact they refused to tell the E3 organizers the name of their company is another contributing factor as to why I believe they're a criminal organization of sorts.

I have a theory in why the updates were broke off: Minecraft was sold, so Mojang wanted their own version of Minecraft that they could sell off for money, and still have a version different enough for them to own it

watching this sent me through so many up and downs

Over the course of this video I kept flipping between thinking "this is an ARG" and "this is real" great work! Super high effort both in the ARG and the video production making it all the more convincing