Can Minecraft players build a computer within Minecraft that can play Minecraft within Minecraft? Apparently, yes.
Admittedly, the chance for amusing, memetic repetition is the main draw for this story, but that should take nothing away from the phenomenal device Minecraft player Hans Lemurson has built within the beloved sandbox game.
Lemurson has long been using the game’s innate tools to craft “computers” — machines that, while crude, are capable of calculation and computation similar to early real-world computers. The obvious joke, on witnessing his works, is “but can your computers play Minecraft?” Presumably tired of hearing that same snickering query, Lemurson set out to prove that they could, and while his results aren’t exactly spot-on, the embedded video is a pretty impressive proof of concept.
“It is a small 2D Platformer type game where you can move around and modify the terrain,” Lemurson explains in his YouTube description. “It’s not truly Minecraft, but it’s about as close as you can come with Redstone.”
Lemurson promises another upcoming video in which he walks through the computer’s construction and explains exactly how he got the device to do its thing. Until then, we’re going to assume a wizard did it.
As with any truly impressive Minecraft creation, the most thrilling part of this whole thing is what it says about the game’s creative limits. Specifically, are there any limits?
Could a Minecraft player craft a stone so large that another Minecraft player couldn’t move it? Honestly that query makes a lot more sense when Thomas Aquinas is addressing his chosen deity, but you get where I’m going with this.
Presumably it’s only a matter of time before Lemurson tasks his Minecraft computer playing Minecraft to craft a computer on which he can play Minecraft. I just want to know if there’s any conceivable end to the levels of abstraction I’m inevitably going to have to describe here.
