Many people have heard of the extremely popular game “Minecraft”. Many teenagers today grew up playing the game, which originally came out in 2009. Since then, Minecraft has become one of the most popular games with over 200 million copies sold worldwide. Today, 126 million people still use the game monthly.

In 2009, Marcus Persson, known as Notch by many, released a game called “Cave Game” on the PC, which quickly became the origin of the well-known game “Minecraft” in May 2009. The game was very basic, but it allowed players to gather resources and create tools and blocks. Players could fight monsters, craft items and explore.

“Minecraft” stayed in beta for almost two years as players edited it and improved the game, and it was finally released by Notch on Dec. 20, 2010, as “Minecraft” version 1.0. This is also known as the adventure update. Since then there have been 17 groups of updates, each adding different features to the game.

The next 3 updates released were minor, adding a few new features like jungle biomes, desert villages, villagers, and a few miscellaneous blocks. This allowed for more exploration opportunities. 

The first major update, 1.4, known as the “Pretty Scary Update” was released in Oct. 2012 which included ‘pretty’ features like anvils and beacons along with some scary features like witches and strengthened mobs. It also added the Wither, which was a new boss you could defeat.

Update 1.5, the Redstone update, was released in Jan. 2013, allowing for players to create more advanced structures and machines with new blocks like powered rails, hoppers and comparators. This allowed players to expand on their creativity and create powered machinery in their words.

Update 1.6 added the beloved horse mob, followed by update 1.7, which added 10 new biomes, some of them being the mesa, spruce forest, savanna, etc. This added diversity to the “Minecraft” world, allowing players to build with different kinds of wood and changed the decorating of structures drastically. 

Update 1.8, well known as the “Bountiful Update” added many new stones and blocks to the game. Players could now craft several new blocks, and an update was added where there were different types of doors. A new boss was added, called the Elder Guardian, as well as a new structure called a sea temple, where players would go to defeat the boss.

Update 1.9 added an update to an already existing landmark, called the end. It allowed players to explore deeper into the end after beating the Ender Dragon. Players could now go through a second portal and explore end islands. End cities were created, where players were challenged to fight a new mob called Shulkers to work towards getting elytra. The elytra are wings that allow players to glide through the air.

“Minecraft” update 1.10 was a smaller update, adding a few new structures, and added a new mob- the polar bear. 1.10 was followed by smaller updates 1.11 and 1.12 which added more blocks and colors to the game. One significant change was allowing players to craft beds that could be any color, instead of the default bed, which was always red.

Update 1.13 was a big leap to “Minecraft” as it is now. It added a large number of sea creatures such as the turtle, tropical fish, dolphin and the hostile mob called the drowned. It also expanded sea life by adding coral in various colors, tridents as weapons and new ocean temperatures. For example, there were Frozen Oceans with icebergs and Warmer Oceans with coral and tropical animals.

Updates 1.14 was a massive update, released in Oct. 2018. It included many new useful blocks for villagers, which improved trades. It also added pillagers and a pillager outpost. These hostile mobs will attack you. They also added a new feature called raids, which are when pillagers attack villages and you, as the player, have to defend the village.

1.15 was a fairly minuscule update, but it added bees and honey. It also improved various biomes and mobs.

The most recent update, released in Feb. 2020 was the craziest of updates in “Minecraft” history. It improved the already existing nether adding many new nether mobs, such as the hoglin, piglin, strider and zoglin. It also added a new block called netherite, which could be crafted into netherite ingots, which improved the armor and tools of the player. It added four new biomes: the Soul Sand valley, Warped forest, crimson forest, and the Basalt Delta. It also added various structures such as the Bastion Remnant, Nether Fossil, Ruined Portal and more. 

With the many years “Minecraft” has been around, it has had several drastic improvements made to the game to maintain popularity. The record-breaking game has been around for almost 12 years now and will be around for many years to come. The next update, 1.17, is coming around the corner quickly and will be released in mid-2021.