Started when it was in Alpha because my brother in law said it was awesome. No one told me you could build tools and such, so I dug out (by hand) a fortress out the side of a mountain that was 7 floors where each floor was 3 blocks tall (technically 5 of you count the ceiling and floor). I showed him my achievement, both proud and frustrated. He asked how many pickaxes and shovels I went through, my response was something around “…what?”

Playing in a world created by my boyfriend and his sons. We made a huge mine. I remember a cobblestone tower. Just in front of this was a small pool of water where I once died because of the bug that didn’t allow you to swim up while taking damage. We started with a small wood house and eventually made a castle out of smooth stone. It had a library and a kitchen and 4 beds - One for each player. I didn’t have an Xbox live account so when we played I was always logged in as a guest. Before leaving the game I’d remove all my armor and empty my inventory into a chest for the next time I joined.

I was in my mid to early teens and Minecraft wasn’t out fully yet. It was a holiday season get together with family, my family flew across the country to spend time with them. My cousin, my older brother, and myself were all playing together when I accidentally broke a block underneath an anvil for the first time and learned they could fall. This was on a platform pretty high in the sky so I assumed it would be no big deal. I let out a muted “oh.” of mild surprise at my discovery, then a few seconds later heard my cousin the the other room roar “WHAAAAAT?!”.

A small message popped up on my screen: “James was squashed by a falling anvil.”

Funny to think so such a small thing ended up becoming the inspiration for my go to username from then on.

Played Alpha and vividly remembered the first night when the monsters come out. Terrified.

Then I discovered mods. Entire game changer when I discovered the Portal Gun.

Good times.

The adventure and terror of not understanding how it all works when I first started playing. Mobs were scary, crafting recepies gave possibilities I didn’t know existed.

Playing the game with my mother after she bought it for my birthday back in 2011.

People touring the massive builds I worked on at nerd.nu i.e a 70x70 skyscraper extending from bedrock level to the height limit. This required over a million blocks be mined, processed and placed.

Getting various features to work in my ongoing mod pack that were jerry rigged together from seemingly unrelated mods. Eg. Modded overgrown stone from biomes o plenty that spreads and “dies” under the same conditions grass blocks do (The erosion 2 mod was used to do this)