Ever since Telltale Games announced they would be making a single player adventure game out of Minecraft, we've wondered just exactly what that would look like.
Well, they gave a little peek at that Oct. 1 with the first trailer for Minecraft: Story Mode.
It doesn't give a whole lot of information, but given what we know about Telltale games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, we can pretty much extrapolate from there how it would play.
Maybe the kid was running Flan's Mod?
All a Virginia Beach mother wanted to do was order a foam Minecraft sword for her son's eighth birthday from Toys R Us. Well, apparently, someone in that supply line had a sh*tload of ammunition they wanted to get rid of.
Because when the online shopper opened the UPS delivered package Sept. 30, that's what she found.
Local channel 13 News Now has the story:
Jasemin Stephenson says she ordered a "Minecraft Foam Diamond Sword" from the toy store's website last week.
When the package arrived Tuesday, Stephenson says she found 800 rounds of 9mm ammunition in the box, along with the sword.
13News Now has reached out to Toys "R" US and is still waiting to hear back.
Crazy, right?
Here's the video from 13 News Now.
During the Oculus' second virtual reality conference, Oculus Connect 2, Oculus Founder and CEO Palmer Luckey announced that Minecraft will make it's way onto the upcoming consumer Oculus Rift.
Luckey took to the stage during the keynote Sept. 24, touting the upcoming experiences that consumers could expect from the device which is set to release in the first quarter of 2016. But his big announcement, which he yelled to the audience, was that the open world, block-building, resource-driven, social phenomenon Minecraft is coming to virtual reality.
It's not a huge surprise, given that Oculus has been working extensively with Microsoft, who owns Minecraft.
Unfortunately for Oculus, the announcement didn't show anything near as amazing as Microsoft's demonstration of their Hololens augmented reality tech working with Minecraft at last E3.
Luckey didn't give any specific details on date or price, so we'll just have to keep waiting for more.
Well, in a weird turn, Mojang has announced the director for that Minecraft movie.
Rob McElhenney, one of the creators and stars of FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia will go behind the camera and direct whatever in the heck the Minecraft movie will be.
Interestingly, according to his IMDB page, McElhenney has only directed three episodes of Always Sunny, one short movie with Danny DeVito and a TV movie called Pariah which hasn't even aired yet. That seems like a big brand to hand off to such a small resume.
Oh, he's also the guy who gained an extra 50 pounds for the TV show because he thought it would be funny.
And it really was.
Even though we've known about the movie for over a year, there's been little in the way of details circling the production. I guess they'll now get to work in figuring out how to possibly make a movie from Minecraft.
There will probably be a pickaxe.
Debuted at Minecon 2015, Minecraft: Story Mode is a 5 episode adventure series from Telltale, set in the Minecraft Universe. What could possibly happen in a scripted Minecraft story? Well,
Players will control protagonist Jesse throughout the season, as portrayed by actor Patton Oswalt. Jesse and his group of friends revere the legendary Order of the Stone; four adventurers who slayed an Ender Dragon. The Order is the very best at what they do: Warrior, Redstone Engineer, Griefer, and Architect. While at EnderCon, Jesse and his friends discover that something is wrong... something dreadful. Terror is unleashed, and they must set out on a journey to find The Order of the Stone if they are to save their world from oblivion.
Are you interested in playing Minecraft: Story Mode?
Specifically, secondary schools across Northern Ireland are being given copies of MinecraftEdu, a version of the game designed to be educational. This initiative is expected to bring Minecraft to 50,000 kids, and will be used to teach everything from art to history and computer coding:
Last week we worked with Artichoke and The Space to recreate, in Minecraft, a version of Burning Man artist David Best’s ‘Temple’ in Minecraft.
The real world Temple was a 70ft structure in the city that was ceremonially burnt. When we took it into the schools we were able to give young people a chance to create their own versions of the Temple, working alongside the artist. We’ve seen Minecraft being used to teach everything from coding to physics but I think that there’s a real opportunity to develop more of these kind of creative projects too.
People in Turkey are really worried that “Minecraft” is going to turn their kids into hardened criminals.
The country’s Family and Social Policies Ministry has launched an investigation into the game after receiving numerous complaints from parents that the game encourages violence (particularly towards women), according to Hurriyet Daily News.
Apparently Turkey hasn’t heard of GTA V.
“In the higher levels of the game the player may need to kill women, allies and even friends for survival reasons,” the article says.
Minecraft is probably one of the least violent games in existence right now, with a majority of the game devoted to hours of mining, farming and building a life in a blocky, pixelated sandbox where anything is possible.
According to the report:
If the ministry’s investigation decides that the game encourages violence, the ministry will proceed by opening a law suit against the game for a country-wide ban.
This isn’t the first time “Minecraft” has been accused of promoting violence.
Last year PETA launched a HQ in “Minecraft” as a sort of animal sanctuary where no one was allowed to harm the digital creatures.
Minecraft: Story Mode will be a standalone game based on the Minecraft world, with an all new original story told in a narrative and choice driven episodic series. The collaboration between Mojang and Telltale has come about to satisfy a "massive demand for fiction set in the Minecraft universe." You can learn more about it by playing Info Quest II on the Mojang Blog.
The game is due out some time in 2015.
PETA is launching a new headquarters in Minecraft on Saturday, as a safe haven where players are not allowed to harm animals… or at least their pixelated counterparts.
So for all you creative sickos out there - that means no compact chicken cookers, barbaric egg farms, cow torture chambers or pig slaughterhouses.
From PETA's website:
Visitors to PETA's custom-made digital island will explore vast expanses of landscapes where the animals of Minecraft roam free. They can also visit extensive vegetable and flower gardens, walk through a fantastic re-creation of PETA's HQ, and discover an abandoned and decaying slaughterhouse.
PETA has gone to the aid of video game animals before, including Pokemon, World of Warcraft seals, the Tanooki suit in Mario Bros., and dogs in Call of Duty.
What a world we live in... 
That deal for Mojang is going through, and Notch is leaving the company. In his announcement, Persson said,
I don't see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it's fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don't make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don't try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it's changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It's certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.
As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I'll probably abandon it immediately.
Meanwhile, Microsoft celebrates their huge acquisition in the video above.
Microsoft is buying Minecraft Mojang AB after Notch approached them a few months ago and offered to sell. Many are speculating that after the deal is done, Notch (real name: Markus Persson) will leave the company. Alongside Minecraft, Microsoft is also getting Cobalt, Scrolls, and, well, all of Mojang for $2 billion.
Basically a fancier Roku box, Amazon's Fire TV lets you stream video, navigate using voice commands, and play Minecraft. Yeah, Minecraft:
So far, the other games Amazon has shown on the Fire TV look like mobile games, but they have developed a fancy controller:
Fire TV is available starting today for $99. Streaming services at launch include Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, and Hulu Plus, with more streaming partners to come.
