Happy 10th Birthday Minecraft!!!

I can't imagine a world without Minecraft (PEGI-7).  It has been everywhere for so long now.  Our house has a LOT of Minecraft lego, foam weapons, plastic figures, plushies...  And we've bought Minecraft four times (I think) - mobile, Vita, PS3 and PS4.  Never on the PC.  Though I suspect that might change...  This might help explain why Minecraft has just become the top selling game of all time, overtaking Tetris!

We've spent days of our lives in Minecraft worlds, and yet we've never managed to get to the End and kill the Enderdragon.  Somehow we get distracted by building castles, or treehouses, or massive defensive walls.  Well, us grown ups do, Seb just likes to replicate other games he likes inside Minecraft.  I think Geometry Dash parkour was one of his most interesting ones!  And despite having some 'goals', like the Enderdragon, it's fun just to mine, and explore, and craft.  It's a strange game, it has something for everyone.  I suppose that's why it's still going strong, after 10 years.

We've watched a lot of YouTubers playing Minecraft, particularly Squid, Stampy and Sqaishey.  Adventure maps, Cave Den, Stampy's Lovely World - Minecraft is probably the first thing we went onto YouTube for.  (Now we sit down every day at least once and watch YouTube together.)

Now they've announced Minecraft Earth - I don't totally understand what this is, but I expect we'll find out soon enough!  It sounds interesting.  But much like non-console versions of Minecraft, I'm wary of it!!

I have to admit I haven't "liked" Minecraft as much since Microsoft took over, with their cross-platform version and their monetisation.  Perhaps this is partly because it meant the end for Stampy's Minecraft videos.  But things move on if they're going to survive, I suppose.  If you don't own the "new" PC version of Minecraft, like us, it has 50% off as part of the birthday celebrations.

A few things then, that I will mention before I depart...

ThinkNoodles has been playing through all the old versions of Minecraft (there's a 'flashback' option in the Minecraft launcher):

This is interesting from a development/programming point of view, since it shows the evolution of the game from something that really NOT interesting at all.  (The jumping Steves are pretty hilarious, though.)

This Cave Den made me laugh so much - it's the one where Stampy and Sqaishey "split up":

And if you haven't read it, you should read Keith Stuart's book "A Boy Made of Blocks".  It's a BRILLIANT read, and shows how important Minecraft is to some kids.  It's not just a game, it's a way of expressing themselves, of socialising within an understandable and controllable environment.  Buy it and read it, it's awesome.  :-)

Ta ta then, and watch out for Herobrine!

Happy 10th Birthday Plants vs Zombies!

I can hardly believe that it has been ten years since the first Plants vs. Zombies game!!  (The 10 Year Anniversary was May 5th.  Of course there's another big 10 Year Anniversary coming up next week, but more on that another time!)

Tweet from PvZ creator George Fan

Seb is a MASSIVE PvZ fan, as you can probably tell from our Instagram feed.  He's recently got back into it in a big way, and he's been collecting plushies from eBay as fast as he can get the money to buy them...  Whenever zombies (or plants) come in the post we all have to formally introduce ourselves to them.  Then we have to play PvZ with them (Seb controls the game and we have to put the plants down).

Sometimes I feel like our lives are being taken over by zombies wandering around muttering 'brains' every few seconds.  Our house is a zombie-filled madhouse.  We're still playing PvZ 2.  And we have a massive collection of plants and zombies that we've drawn and laminated, so that we can play with them.  Oh, and Seb went to Comicon last year as a PvZ zombie.  He's getting me to make a Royal Hypno Flower costume for this year - I have the weirdest mum jobs!

Anyway, onto the PvZ anniversary fun.

Zack Scott has done a (lengthy) interview with the game's creator, George Fan (who also created Octogeddon).  Zack Scott has done a LOT of PvZ videos and he's kid friendly, so if you also have a PvZ obsessive in your house check him out!  (They might not be super keen on the hour and a half interview video, though!)

One of our favourite YouTubers, Zebragamer, has started a celebratory series playing through PvZ 2, so that's also worth a look.  He's great fun to watch, whatever he plays.

So whether it's PvZ (PEGI-7), PvZ 2 (PEGI-7), PvZ Heroes (PEGI-7). PvZ Garden Warfare (PEGI-7) or PvZ Garden Warfare 2 (also PEGI-7), why not play a bit of PvZ this week?  If you haven't played the original games, you should.  They're brilliant!

Oh, and also you should eat some tacos!

Hooray!