Minecraft Pocket Edition (and Demo)
The very first version of Minecraft I ever played was the Pocket Edition Demo. This version of the game is no longer available, but my memory of it is still vivid. I first got this game on my Samsung Galaxy S2 tablet when I was 11 or 12, and didn’t get the full game for months.
Quirks of the Demo
Minecraft Pocket Edition Demo (MCPED) had several limits to make you buy the full game. You could not save worlds, you didn’t have access to several items, and it was a much older version of the game, however it did have LAN multiplayer. It also played very different from normal Minecraft, there was no crafting, unbreakable stone tools, and a lot of blocks didn’t generate in the world, instead you were given an infinite supply of these inaccessible blocks.
The full version of MCPE
I eventually got a Google Play card and bought MCPE fully, and to my surprise the full version of the game was four major updates ahead of the demo, and the game played completely differently which surprised me at first. This version of the game played much more like normal Minecraft, where there was crafting, no infinite supplies of blocks, and you had to craft gear. The Pocket edition also featured something exclusive in the Nether Reactor Core. At the time mobile hardware couldn’t handle a full nether, so Mojang added this reactor core where you build a structure of specific blocks, and it would generate a massive castle around you made of netherrack, as well as spawning a bunch of zombie pigmen and dropping nether items around the area.
