There’s no shortage of Minecraft mods that transform the sandbox survival game in all manner of fantastical ways. Now, courtesy of a new mod, you can even piece together a functioning PC and use it to play classic shooter Doom.
Dubbed VM Computers, the mod creates a VM to recreate a working PC in Minecraft. Creator delta2force explains on the CurseForge listing for the mod, ‘Order yourself computer parts from a satellite orbiting around your Minecraft world to build a computer that actually works!’
You’ll need VirtualBox to get the mod up and running (at least version 6.1). From there, you can create an ordering tablet to order specific PC parts, including motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and hard drive, which are then delivered by a satellite orbiting the Minecraft world. It completes an orbit five times a day (in-game time), giving players lots of opportunities to bag new kit for their virtual PCs. The parts even come in boxes bearing a VM Corp logo.
With parts in hand, players need to create a new virtual hard drive and import an ISO into Minecraft. Once done, choose a case, assign an OS (including Windows 98 and Windows XP), add in a motherboard, RAM, and other components.
Once the machine is set up, and you’ve gone through the process of installing the OS (in real-time), it acts very much like a standard PC (and also uses as much storage space, CPU, and RAM as one). You can navigate Windows, use MS Paint, and even load up the DOS version of Doom.
delta2force does warn that the mod is prone to issues. They note, ‘Warning: This mod can screw with your VirtualBox settings. If VirtualBox doesn’t start normally, delete your configuration folder and try to start it again. If this doesn’t fix it, please contact me on Reddit. Also, this mod has terrible coding practices. Real bad ones. Because of this, it’s client only and you also can’t join multiplayer servers with it installed.’
As of writing, the mod has been downloaded over a thousand times, implying there’s interest in porting a virtual PC to Minecraft. If you fancy a go, all the files and an installation walkthrough are available here. To catch a glimpse of the mod in action, head here.