Minecraft, by Mojang, defined the voxel sandbox: an endless world generated by the program, carved into cubes you break, pick up and place again to build whatever you like. Released in early access in 2009 and finalised in 2011, it became the best-selling game in history and gave birth to an entire genre.
Mojang's game is not free software and Recalbox does not ship it. What this system offers is Craft, an open-source clone written by Michael Fogleman: a few thousand lines of C and modern OpenGL, released under the MIT licence. The program keeps the essentials of the gameplay loop — terrain generated with Perlin/simplex noise, a dozen block types, plants, transparent blocks such as glass, a day/night cycle with a textured sky dome — and stores world changes in a SQLite database. It is deliberately minimal: no crafting, no creatures, no survival mode.
Craft was turned into a libretro core, which makes it launchable like any other Recalbox game, with a controller and without configuration.
| Original game | Minecraft, Mojang |
| Port shipped | Craft, by Michael Fogleman |
| Engine | C and modern OpenGL (shaders) |
| Game type | Voxel sandbox |
| Port licence | MIT |
| Controller | Mandatory |
Recalbox ships Craft already installed on this system, ready to play. See the Included games page.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro craft | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
This system is only available on RPi5/500 and on PC. The core is built for neither RPi3/RPi Zero 2, nor RPi4/400, nor OGA/OGS/RG351, nor RG353: on those machines the system does not appear.
Craft is the only emulator for this system and is therefore used by default. Netplay is not available on this system and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled by the core.
Minecraft is a read-only system: the game is shipped complete and its folder is not meant to be modified.
/recalbox/share_init/roms/ports/Minecraft/
Supported extension: .game
The folder holds a single file, which merely provides the entry in the game list:
/recalbox/share_init/roms/ports/Minecraft/
└── minecraft.game
There is no game data to provide: the world is not a shipped file, it is generated by the program on first launch and then kept from one session to the next.
Unlike the other ports, this system does not read
/recalbox/share/roms/. Dropping files into/recalbox/share/roms/ports/Minecraft/has no effect, and Mojang's actual Minecraft cannot be added to this system.