Monthly Archives: October 2010

Perrson on Minecraft’s Success

Minecraft surpasses 500K sales, Persson explains how he did it | Joystiq

According to the official Minecraft stats page, more than 500,000 of the nearly 1.6 million registered players have already purchased a license for the game, which is still in the alpha phase of development. That’s pretty much unprecedented in the history of game development — certainly indie game development — and perhaps only comparable to a big-budget marketing effort; one that might secure those kinda pre-release purchase numbers through pre-orders and offer a limited “beta” trial of the game through a highly-controlled channel. So, yeah, Minecraft’s “alpha stage” success is unprecedented.
Is it just luck? The one-man mastermind behind it all, Markus Perrson, doesn’t think so.

Interesting article. It’s fairly short, so click through if that’s of interest to you at all!

October 11

I had 10/11 and 10/12, and I did pretty much nothing. It was very nice. We just hung around the house lazily, playing WoW and watching TV. I played a little Portal but didn’t finish it this time. I got sidetracked into something. It was really nice to do nothing though. I always feel like there’s so much to do!

Rolled Foods

In the past couple weeks we’ve had two super delicious homemade rolled foods! First we had spring rolls! They were quite tasty and filled with basically every ingredient we had. Then a few days ago we made taquitos! They were so, so great! Why aren’t I having homemade taquitos for every meal?

The 25th Anniversary of the NES

Today’s the 25th anniversary of the US launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System! This was the first console my generation usually had and was the system to pull the industry out of the video game crash. I sure loved mine!

 
I think my fondest memories are of playing Super Mario Bros. I never beat it until years later on the SNES. I always got stuck in World 8. Duck Hunt and Hogan’s Alley were also games I really enjoyed. Not enough people played Hogan’s Alley!
Another one of my favorites was and still is Contra. I used to dream about this game! Contra introduced many gamers to co-op play, something I still enjoy. It was challenging, fun, and incredibly action-packed! I’ll never forget that first boss -the building with the red orb for a weak point!
There were many other games I enjoyed as well. Castelian was great even though I never got very far. Years later I tried to find it but kept failing. It wasn’t that the game was rare; rather, it was because I couldn’t remember the name! I thought of it as “that game in which you go around a tower.” Eventually I found a copy on Game Boy, which allowed me to go find it on NES because I then knew the name!
Solar Jet Man is another title that I really loved but never progressed in much. I’d still like to play it more! And Rygar! I know both my dad and I liked Rygar a lot! It’s too bad that series fell apart. Then there were the two great puzzle games – Tetris and Dr. Mario! Both are fantastic titles. While I don’t play the NES versions now, I still play both of these games!
Lastly there’s my favorite NES game. I didn’t actually play it until college, but it’s excellent! I’m talking about River City Ransom, the best beat ’em up ever created! It had fun mechanics, humor in story and dialogue, hidden things to find, and character progression. And of course, co-op!
There were many more great NES games, and I’m sure I’m missing some of my favorites here. Regardless, I think I’ve talked abou it enough.
Thanks, NES!