Minecraft VM Mod Lets You Boot Windows 95 To Play DOOM

Minecraft has become a seedbed for creativity and ingenuity that has seen no end of extraordinary creations, from recreations of fictional locations to mapping the real world to scale. There have also been attempts at creating a computer out of these blocks, though those computers are more like the calculating machines of centuries past. Thanks to a mod, however, it has actually become possible to run a real computer inside Minecraft, a computer that not only runs Windows 95 but can even run DOOM on Windows 95 inside Minecraft.

To some extent, this VM Computer mod is a bit of a cheat but it doesn't make the achievement any less notable. It utilizes VirtualBox, the virtualization technology bought by Sun which is now owned by Oracle, to actually let you "build" computers inside the blocky world. These computers can run not just Windows 95 but other operating systems as well.

The way the VM Computer mod works is actually amusing. You order parts to build the PC block but have to wait for a satellite to pass over your location. That satellite orbits Minecraft five times a day so you'll have to be on your toes to catch the payload when it does.

Once configured, you pretty much have a working computer that runs a conventional desktop operating system that can run almost anything supported by that OS. In the tradition of computer and gaming geeks, however, one of the very first demos of that capability has been to, of course, run DOOM. So yes, Minecraft can run the original DOOM with nary a lag or misplaced block in sight.

Connecting Minecraft to VirtualBox opens up more possibilities beyond simply running Doom. In theory, one can even run Minecraft on Windows 95 on Minecraft. Whether that makes sense is, of course, debatable but it's exactly that freedom to play and experiment that has continued to make Minecraft a success despite the rise of numerous open-world sandbox games after it.