Developed by Christar Entertain Company (1980–2003)
In gaming history, few stories are as strange as the one surrounding the so-called Minecraft PS1 Prototype. Long before Mojang or Markus Persson, a small European studio named Christar Entertain Company experimented with voxel-based terrain engines as early as 1980—an era when 3D graphics were still in their infancy.
Their most ambitious project, internally titled "CaveGame: Earth Edition", was demonstrated privately at E3 on May 12, 1995, running on early PlayStation hardware. The demo showcased a procedurally generated landscape made of cubes, dynamic lighting, and primitive weather effects—technology considered nearly impossible for the time.
After Christar declared bankruptcy on 23 October 2003, their headquarters near Bucharest, Romania, were left to decay. The facility was demolished in 2008, but a group of preservationists reportedly found several prototype discs and handwritten design notes in the rubble. One disc, labeled "Minecraft_PSX_Build1995", became the center of speculation after appearing online in 2011.
Though its authenticity remains debated, the "Christar Build" has become a legend among retro game enthusiasts—a haunting glimpse of what Minecraft might have been, had it truly begun in the 1980s.
