Modded Minecraft: MCSX

Posted by brilokuloj on Nov 12, 2024

MCSX - Minecraft: PS1 Edition answers a question absolutely none of us asked, but I am thrilled to hear the answer to: what if Minecraft was released for the original PlayStation? Also, what if it was spooky?

Quick disclaimer: this review is based on my experience with MCSX version 1.5, which is over a year old by now. Use your own judgment and don’t let me put you off of a modpack just because I can’t be arsed to update it.

I was recommended this modpack by a friend, in what I now recognize may have been a joke based on the absurd length of its description. The joke(?) flew straight over my head at the time, as I was too enamored by the effort placed into the presentation.

A physical mockup of Minecraft in a Playstation case

Sure, it isn’t convincing. But it’s cool, and you may have noticed by now that I really enjoy PS1 games. I really couldn’t imagine a downside here, so I got immediately to playing it.

MCSX, which I quickly nicknamed “Minecraft Sex”, starts things off with a nostalgic loading screen featuring a rotating grass block on a black background. The window is disguised as a running copy of the PS1 emulator ePSXe, which is pretty funny.

Side note: the modpack forces full screen, presumably for spooky immersion. I found this personally annoying, as I’m not cool with a horror game hijacking my controls. I don’t remember exactly what I did, but I managed to bypass this by editing some config files – unfortunately, this breaks placement of some of the graphical overlays.

A bee floating by

The presence of bees was a little distracting.

With the amount of Minecraft I’ve played, I like to name my worlds something relevant to how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking about, as a way to pass a good omen onto the save. Then I usually make the seed the same as the world name. So I don’t know why I named this world “SWAG MEAL”. Your guess is as good as mine.

The download page strongly recommends you play this with a controller, which I did whenever I had the energy to plug mine in. Minecraft is surprisingly fun on a controller, and playing like this shifted my priorities away from making intricate builds.

My house at nighttime

My creepy house.

As far as the game itself goes, it’s just vanilla+ Minecraft. You’ve got a few mods that extend the gameplay and add decoration, but I didn’t encounter any of them. There’s a lot of effort put into making the game feel like “oldschool” Minecraft, though it doesn’t commit to any specific release.

The most substantial difference is the addition of two Herobrine mods. True Herobrine adds a mob that stands at least 25 blocks away and watches you until you approach; Infernø’s Herobrine Mod adds evidence of him to the world generation, such as 2x2 tunnels and shaved trees. I’m not really scared of Herobrine, but I found his inclusion quite tastefully creepy, with no unpleasant loud jumpscares. (IIRC, I think there are jumpscares but not loud ones.)

Steve sleeping in bed

I never got a picture of Herobrine but pretend that I did.

Stairs in the woods

Also the Stairs in the Woods from creepypasta are here too.

All that said… I think I was hoping for it to get scarier. The pack goes as far as to rename the Nether to its original working title of “The Slip”, which gave me hope for a substantial reimagining (I went in as blind as I could). So when I finally made a Nether portal and went in, only to see the same ol’ empty world generation I’ve always seen, I got bored and stopped playing.

A screen asking the player to change discs

The fake disc change screen was a great touch...

The Nether.

... but there's only so much Netherrack I can look at in my life.

Let’s chalk that up to a me problem – it’s not really fair that I want it to be more scary but not too scary, we can’t really get a Petscop psychological experience in Minecraft. It’s a treat if you do like vanilla+ and aren’t picky! I actually really did enjoy myself and consider the experience to be memorable.

Modlist

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Categories: gaming

Tagged: modded minecraft minecraft

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