It's been a long time coming. You remember your first time punching trees, the first time hiding in a little hole you dug for yourself so the zombies couldn't kill you, the first sword you crafted, and the first time a creeper blew all your handiwork to smithereens. The Alpha arrived, you tried out some buggy multiplayer. Huge glitches left giant gaps in the world, making for some easy mining. You couldn't login for (what seemed like) a month. You built train tracks and Redstone traps. A little world for yourself. The Beta was released, and suddenly everything was new again. It was a whole new world to explore, and there were plenty more reasons to lock yourself up at night and hide from the monsters. You even played Minecraft - Pocket Edition on your phone. All this, before the game was even ready.

Notch has just announced the 1.0 version of his indie-darling creation: Minecraft. After more than two years of development, the game has already raked in millions of dollars in "pre-sales" for Mojang, which started with an employee of one. The game has also consumed millions of man hours as players built anything (and everything) they'd like in the sandbox Notch devised. Most of the features of the 1.0 release have been available along the way, but 1.0 offers an official "end" to the game, along with some more RPG elements — and of course plenty of bug fixes. Mojang promises to continue development of the game, even as it embarks on new projects, and of course the vibrant modding community isn't showing any signs of slowing.