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Minecraft may not be the most action-packed experience, but all that walking is the only thing the Omni virtual reality rig needs. Above: Two Omni developers take Minecraft multiplayer for a spin, demonstrating the high-voltage strolling, jogging and jumping that players can expect from the game in VR.

The Omni Kickstarter still has 20 days to go, and is currently at $970,000 of its $150,000 goal.

For everyone without an Omni set-up - and those with one, eventually - Minecraft has a brand new launcher on PC. The new launcher is required to play the game's most recent version, Minecraft 1.6, and any future updates. This new interface supports multiple usernames within one Mojang account, though that feature isn't yet enabled through Mojang itself.

The new system will update automatically, without the need for these pesky manual updates, and single-player content is available offline. Players must be offline for that to be the case, or the launcher will continue its attempts to reach the Minecraft servers.

Minecraft added horses—among other things—in its big 1.6 update. As an alternative to reading boring patch notes, The Farlanders community created an awesome, Western-themed short clip to showcase all the updates. Minecraft 1.6 Trailer [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Following stops in Las Vegas and then Paris, Minecon 2013, the annual gathering for Minecraft fans, will be held in Orlando, Fla. Dates, ticket and hotel information will be announced in July.

New York's Museum of Modern Art has announced that it is adding six video games, including Minecraft, and a console to its famous collection of contemporary art. The Museum chose to honor fourteen games last year (including Pac-Man, SimCity 2000, EVE Online, and Portal) based on their traits of behavior, aesthetics, space, and time. This year, the museum is adding Atari classics Pong, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tempest, and Yar's Revenge, as well as Mojang's modern hit, Minecraft.

MoMA's also adding the Magnavox Odyssey to the collection, remembering it not only as the first commercial home video game console, but as "a masterpiece of engineering and industrial design." As part of the museum's collection, all of these games and the console will periodically show up in exhibits put together by MoMA's Architecture and Design department.

The Minecraft cart full of gold bars isn't stopping anytime soon, as 4J Studios, developers of the Xbox 360 port of the game, announced it has now sold more than seven million copies on the platform. The previous milestone was set in March, when the game surpassed six million units.

Mojang, the studio handling the PC version, announced a couple of days ago the game had passed the 11 million sold mark.

The retail version of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, which became available in North America earlier this month, launches in the UK today. And be prepared to buy Minecraft all over again when the game becomes available on Xbox One later this year. Look at dem graphix!

The next time you go to New York City’s Museum of Modern Art to take in, say, a retrospective of Le Corbusier, you’ll be able to get up close and personal with one of the earliest home consoles ever made. And there’ll be Atari classics and a modern indie juggernaut waiting for you, too. MoMA has just announced that they’re adding to the Magnavox Odyssey console and six new titles to their already impressive roster of video games. Today, we are thrilled to announce the addition of one gaming console and six more video games to our collection. These include works from the early pioneers Atari, Taito, and Ralph Baer, and from the comparatively young Mojang. The new additions are: Magnavox Odyssey (1972)Pong (1972)Space Invaders (1978)Asteroids (1979)Tempest (1981)Yar’s Revenge (1982)Minecraft (2011) Now, MoMA isn’t the only museum to harbor games as part of their collections. The Museum of the Moving Image hosted IndieCade East this year, has mounted a few game-centric exhibitions, and has a few arcade machines that greet visitors on its first floor. And, of course, the Smithsonian’s The Art of Video Games made waves for its ambitious look at the visuals of the medium. But MoMA’s expansion of their games archive shows a firm commitment to exploring and expanding what games can mean to people who don’t keep up with every little development that happens in the medium. It’s a heartening trend. A quick Google search doesn’t turn up anything for the Musuem of Modern Art being recreated in Minecraft. Surely, someone needs to get on that now, right? (Original image by Allie Caulfield.)

My Little Pickaxe, My Little Pickaxe, What is crafting all about? My Little Pickaxe, My Little Pickaxe Crafting is magic! I used to wonder what crafting could be. Until Mojang added horses to Minecraft.(more…)

Minecon 2013, the third annual Minecraft convention, will be held in Orlando, Florida, from November 2 - 3, with tickets and hotels available in July.

Notch says he chose Orlando by spinning a globe and sticking a sword through it, but we assume there are other reasons for his pick. Obviously, Orlando is the sole home of Universal Studios' magical theme park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Also, the weather in November should be absolutely lovely.

Minecon 2012 was held in Disneyland Paris in November and drew in 7,000 fans, and the previous year it set up shop in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 2011 event saw 5,000 attendees, and it hosted impressive scale models of real-life Minecraft beasts, including a 40 foot Enderdragon.

The monumental plan of the man called Grahame is to recreate the entirety of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in Minecraft. It's coming together; he's teased the first 15 minutes of his project, which now has blocky Star Destroyers and jawas on Tatooine. As the description says, the clip should be in sync with the 1977 theatrical version of the movie. Grahame has recreated Star Wars scenes like the Battle of Hoth pretty amazingly, and I'm eager to see his Minecraft-style rebel assualt on the Death Star. A New Hope - Minecraft - Star Wars (15 min Promo) [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

This looks like so much fun, dammit. Only another couple of months away from another children's game I can't wait to get my hands on. It's about the building, you see, and while sure I could spend hours in Minecraft making magnificent creations, I prefer my blocks pre-shaped. I'd say Disney Infinity's Toy Box is Mega Bloks to Minecraft's LEGO, but no one likes to be called Mega Bloks. What I am saying is I love building, but I am really lazy about it. This looks like it's right up my alley. Sorry, Mega Bloks. You know I love you.

Like an ever-growing block tower, or more pertinently like an ever-growing money tower, Minecraft continues to sell and sell. After reaching the 10 million milestone in April, the Mojang game took just under three months to hit the 11 million mark on PC.

So with Pocket Edition at 10 million, Minecraft XBLA at 6 million, and the recently-released retail Xbox 360 version doing tastily according to Notch, our stats people tell us that puts the franchise's overall sales approximately in the ka-squillion range.

Oh, and there's the Xbox One version to come out, too.

Alright, maybe they don't need a secret underground submarine lair, but the pirate bay that the Docm77 and ZipKrown people built in Minecraft has one, and besides the whole thing looks just too damn good. The video is also showcasing the Japanese UGOcraft mod, that enables blocks to freely slide and rotate. Can't think of anything missing from the lair, except maybe a giant volcano. The place already looks more like a giant fortress than a secret hideout. One has to think that they're not trying to stay on the down low. And with a build this great, they shouldn't! The Pirate Bay - A Ugocraft Mod Showcase [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

The trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming movie Pacific Rim remains badass in the animated Minecraft version of it. The edit is made by the same guys, Steel House Digital, who recreated one of the Man of Steel trailers. We might just wonder what's nexton their list. Elysium? Or maybe Ender's Game? Pacific Realm - A Minecrafted Homage to Pacific Rim [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

State of Decay, which "did not have an ad budget" nor "a physical copy to load onto shelves," sold 250,000 copies on Xbox Live in its first two days. Only Minecraft has been more successful.

Mojang has released an update for the iOS and Android versions of Minecraft: Pocket Edition, adding preliminary support for the online cooperative Realms mode.

Realms mode supports online play for up to 10 simultaneous players within a single world, allowing friends to collaborate on projects and/or raise havoc together. The alpha version of Realms is currently free, and will be an optional paid service in future updates.

The latest Pocket Edition update also adds features such as buckets, eggs, milk, cake and fire to the game, making it important to keep an eye out for pyromaniacs among your online guests. Maybe they'll play nice if you bake them all cakes beforehand? Just an idea.

For the past few months, there's been a cool Twitter hashtag circulating among the Japanese language Twitterverse. The tag is #なぜ描いたかわからないイラスト晒せ (Naze Kaita ka Wakaranai Irasuto Sarase), which translates to "Exposé of Illustrations I Don't Know Why I Drew". The hashtag is rather interesting because people continue to add to it, keeping things fresh and fun. Also, professional illustrators, such as Chainsaw Lollipop character designer NekoshowguN, toss up doodles that they have no clue why they created. Below, you can see some of the creations that appeared under the hashtag. And remember, the artists have no idea why they drew them! Photos: kitunenasu, sukekiyo56, bisuke, bakugannu, sahk_n2, whogets, wozawa, D_koutya, patchimlikit, zakuro, ragho_net, sukekiyo, まとめ, NekoshowguN To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

This blocky version of the “Ideal of Hope” Man of Steel trailer does the one thing that Minecraft recreations need to do to work: it captures the same energy of the original—in this case, the moody melodrama of the upcoming Superman movie—despite looking, well, kind of goofy.

The Minecraft creator has recently tweeted the picture to the left/above, adding that the console—a gold-colored original PlayStation—was part of a "VIP invitation to an E3 event from Sony." So shiny. [Thanks, NeoGAF!]

Yes, this is Minecraft. But it's not a recreation of a pop culture icon/giant penis. It's using the game for something really interesting. This modification to the game is called CivCraft, and to be crudely simplistic, casts you in the role of one of the poor little peons from a game of Civilization, as you team up with other people to build a town. CivCraft [Site, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

There’s not a lot of structure to vanilla Minecraft’s multiplayer. You build, you admire, you take a giant isometric screenshot and admire some more, then you discover creative mode and TNT. Then you restart the server and promise to never do that again (unless you’re 2b2t, then you just keep on going). Then someone mentions mods, and you get lost looking for something to give the game scope. There’s nothing wrong with vanilla, but if you’re looking for a server that turns the world into a more interesting place to explore, and eventually claim bits of your own, take a look at the CivCraft server.(more…)

The timer ticks down toward zero. We tear across the Boneyard, one of Halo: Reach's best multiplayer maps, my good friend Rus driving with me sitting shotgun. I'm clutching the blue flag in hands that would be sweating if they were real. We shed our red teammates like skin; they race past us going the other direction on foot and in alien vehicles, crashing to pieces against the blue players that pursue us. They fall, re-spawn, hurtle past, and fall again. All the while the timer ticks down. Seconds left. No blues in sight. No more obstacles. No chance of losing now. But something happens. The clock reaches zero. The game is over, and it's a tie. We imagine our teammates, hands gripping controllers, first puzzled, then enraged. Maybe they'll press "B" to exit the lobby in frustration instead of letting the game whisk them away to the next match. Maybe they'll watch the instant replay, fast-forwarding through to the end to find out how we could have possibly let that victory slip away. Then they'll see us drive past our base, me still clutching the flag, passing within feet of where we could have scored and won, instead putting virtual petal to the metal and driving off the edge of the map and into oblivion. We take the team's win with us, but earn ourselves a different sort of victory. We are trolls. It's what we do. We'll play a game straight for hours, our teammates unsuspecting, hunting for that perfect moment. There's an art to good trolling. It's not about being as destructive or antagonistic as possible. Anyone can chuck grenades at their teammates. That takes no guile. It's philistine. What's the point? The term itself, "trolling," has become worryingly mainstream, its definition growing nebulous through overuse. Judges are using it to define shady attorneys and copyright abusers. It's being applied to basically anyone who acts like a dick. Third-rate trolls with no craft have become universally despised for ruining games, and most gamers have forgotten what it even means to get truly, honestly trolled. Urban Dictionary gets it: trolling is "the art of deliberately, cleverly, and secretly pissing people off…trolling does not mean just making rude remarks," it says. "Trolling requires deceiving." It's not the act of screwing up someone else's game that gets us off. It's the thrill of the chase. We want to surprise you. We'll play a game straight for hours, our teammates unsuspecting, hunting for that perfect moment. The moment that will make the anonymous eyes behind a dozen scattered televisions widen in surprise. We'll make you rage. We'll make you cry. You'll throw your hands in the air in frustration. And afterward, if we've trolled you right, you'll laugh. Death at a funeral Seven years ago an avid World of Warcraft player suffered a tragic, fatal stroke. Her online friends organized a very public ceremony during which friends and enemies alike could come and pay their respects. A rival guild, ironically named Serenity Now, decided to crash that ceremony, and a bloodbath ensued. It was brutal, calculated and somehow, naively, unexpected. Or so the story goes. Regardless, the video remains hilarious to this day. I've never met Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki, but if I ever did I'd ask him how big a troll he considers himself. I'm fairly certain what his answer would be. Dark Souls was made for trolling. Summoning other players to help in your world requires you to transform into a vulnerable state that leaves your virtual back door open to invasions from malicious players hoping to prey on the weak or unsuspecting. Dark Souls features underhanded spells that turn your avatar into a tree or a statue so you can hide out in the open, and weapons that let you steal valuable in-game currency called Humanity from victims too slow to move out of your way. One evening recently I found myself invading other players' worlds, as I am wont to do. I lose some games and win others. That's how it goes. But two sociopathic thugs showed me the meaning of trolling that night. As I spawned in my would-be victim's world, I saw two players on either side of my still-loading character, each casting a spell. A golden aura instantly surrounded me, and I found myself trapped in magic molasses, doomed to move at a snail's pace. Powerless to escape or fight back, I became easy prey for their devastating Humanity-stealing attacks. Once they'd had their fill ("yummy," one messaged me later, after calling me a "noob pussyfart"), they dispatched me easily. I returned to my world feeling utterly defeated. We had more encounters that night, but the dishonorable duo usually came away with the upper hand. They were playing a dirty game. That spell is frowned on in PVP circles for being far too debilitating. And the Humanity-draining attack, though normally easy to dodge, is not exactly sportsmanlike. After playing Dark Souls more or less continuously since its release, I thought I had seen everything. I never expected to be ganked so hard, and I never saw it coming. I still haven't stopped laughing about it. Making a list, checking it twice If you managed to sneak in some Dark Souls this past holiday season in between football games and family dinners, you may have come across a white-haired player dressed in red robes. He may have dropped an item on the ground and gestured for you to take it. If you were a nice boy or girl, you'd get to keep the present. But if you were naughty and tried to attack your benefactor or steal another player's present, you'd be dealt with accordingly. Dark Souls Santa doled out holiday cheer and deadly justice in equal measure. The video above is one of my favorites. Rus and I spent a few summer months hopelessly entangled in the block-shaped world of Minecraft, rapturous at the idea of playing splitscreen co-op on my massive TV on the Xbox 360 version of Mojang's world-building masterpiece. At first our sessions were strictly exploratory as we tested the limits of a game he and I had previously only dabbled in. But in a game where you can build anything, things quickly turn nasty. Back to Halo: Reach for a moment. In Forge Mode—a simplified map editor—I would often craft house-sized teleporters that would send other players to the bottom of the ocean and rake them back and forth across the battlefield like a vacuum cleaner for trolls. In Minecraft, we started smaller, laying simple traps and plundering each other's supplies. He spent hours building pointlessly huge structures made of easily-harvested materials. I dug elaborate systems of tunnels in search of elusive diamonds. Once my companion realized it was easier to steal my diamonds than find his own, I made it my goal to build a Rus-proof vault. That's not easy in a game where the primary mechanic is destroying things with a pickaxe. This consumed me for several weeks, and eventually I built a structure I hoped would prove impenetrable. The vault floated, magically isolated, a hundred feet in the air. It was made entirely of obsidian, the hardest (and hardest to mine) material in the game. The entrance consisted of a contraption that required two players working in tandem to open it. I covered the entire thing in flowing lava, and wired it with TNT that would detonate if it was tampered with. It was elaborate. I considered it masterful. I stored my loot inside, along with some food and a bed in the event I was besieged. Yeah, I may have been too into it. When I lured Rus back into my world, he was appropriately puzzled for several minutes. I grew smug. Then he battered down the door, rushed past the molasses-quick lava, and plundered my diamonds anyway. I was out-trolled and I knew it, but it was still worth those few minutes of satisfaction. The long con EVE Online players have actually built themselves a virtual economy that is, if anything, even more complex than the real-world one. Maybe in EVE, it's not considered strange to spend a real year of your real life plotting to take down a powerful corporation, entering its ranks at the bottom level and working your way up the corporate ladder until you can pull the trigger on its CEO and decimate a $16,500 (real money) company at the behest of its main business rivals. Or maybe the members of the Guiding Hand Social Club, a shady agency that did exactly that all the way back in 2005, were just hardcore enough to pull it off. Either way, epic troll. It's easy to be a mediocre troll. Anyone can throw grenades at their teammates in Modern Warfare or scream expletives into the mic during an otherwise friendly game of Team Fortress 2. It takes no forethought to simply blow up all your team's vehicles, leave your friends behind in Left 4 Dead, or harass online strangers in fits of sheer boredom. Anyone can mod their console and make themselves invincible or steal a friendly player's air-dropped care package. Those forms of "trolling" are unimaginative and easy. But most things that are easy aren't really worth doing. I love a good solo, narrative experience. I much prefer it to stale, repetitive competitive multiplayer. I was playing Zelda while other kids were absorbed in endless Counterstrike matches. I also don't like sports. There's a pattern there, I think. But as I've gotten older some games have continued to mirror the real world more and more closely. Now the will of the player is more important than the rules of the game, and just like in real life our interactions with other people define our experiences. That's what makes it interesting. Playing by yourself is fine, but it's when others challenge the very boundaries of your experience that things really get good. I visited Bungie last year to get an early look at the Halo makers' next game, Destiny. They promised a game with seamless multiplayer that will allow players to jump in and out of each other's worlds without even realizing it. When I asked them what kind of limits they're going to place on player-to-player interactions—will there be PVP zones? Will I be able to attack other players on sight? Can I be a troll if I want to?—their noncommittal answer did not fill me with hope. Long after I've finished the main missions and the side quests, tried all the challenges, and unlocked every achievement, I continue returning to games like Dark Souls and Minecraft because I can manipulate their systems. Being able to push the boundaries makes a game endlessly interesting, especially when you can do it in a social setting. Maybe Destiny will end up being safer for the masses, but if its PVP doesn't allow a little wiggle room for trolling it might not hold my attention for very long. I touched on this months ago in an article about blurring the lines between single player and multiplayer. Playing by yourself is fine, but it's when others challenge the very boundaries of your experience that things really get good. I hate falling into a routine. What I want is to be surprised. Trolling is how I accomplish that, but I always troll in a way that I hope will cause my victims to have a more unpredictable—or even shocking—experience as well. It's this thought that drives me to enter the next match and wait for my opportunity to do the unexpected—even if it means losing. Some victories are fleeting, but our teammates in Halo might just remember those two idiots who drove off the edge of the world and laughed on the way down.

Worldwide musical sensation Psy spends the entirety of his music video for "Gentleman" griefing real people. Now it's time to grief some virtual block folks. StageFiveTV made the vid with the easy-to-use Mine-Imator, deftly capturing the spirit of Psy's performance without having to spend too much time building sets. With such powerful tools readily available, this was only a matter of time. Best we get it over with. Minecraft Grieferman (Psy "Gentleman" Parody) [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

The blocky 3D character models in Minecraft are funny, imaginative, and filled with character, but also anything but realistic. We love the little guy, but he's not very expressive when it comes to creating Minecraft machinima. Andrew Price is trying to fix that. Perhaps he shouldn't. Price's renewed model has all the necessary improvements to transform Minecraft's standard character model into a horrifying polygon beast, a nightmare from the lost pages of a dark Maya design book. Keep an eye on Andrew's channel for a download link, if you'd like to add this character for your Minecraft videos. Creating a More Humanistic Minecraft Model in Maya: Part 1 [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Infocom Games seems to have a serious problem with creativity—but they've found a way around it. Here's their secret. Take Minecraft. Combine it with some other popular or good property. Possibly profit? REPEAT. Ace Combat: Block Sniper? It's Assassin's Creed plus Minecraft (plus...shooting? Can't say it's completely unoriginal, then. I guess.) Block Craft: Iron Ops? Why, that's Minecraft plus Iron Man, of course! Also a shooter, so many I shouldn't give them any points for "originality"—especially when that's probably the most generic genre out there nowadays. I'm impressed by how the name manages to scream VIDEO GAMES while also giving a nod to what it's rippping off, though. And now, for Infocom's latest unique creation: Ace Block Jump. Let's take a moment to look at the screenshots, yes? This one might take the cake in terms of number of things that were ripped off. So we've got Minecraft, that one is obvious. The backgrounds are from Fez. The characters seem to be from Street Fighter, Batman, and Power Rangers. The description itself is kind of hilarious: ****** Time to do it ACE BLOCK JUMP - The coolest app out there! $ 0.99 Limited time only! ********The first action game, in which we mixed PIXEL and MINECRAFT style ( PIXELCRAFT ). The most exciting and amusing game ever, specially in this new style.Don't miss this marvelous game, you can meet crazy characters and weapons!Features:- Amazing retina graphics- Explosive gameplay- Realistic explosions and effects- Various characters- Fantastic levels- Complete physics enabled - Universal enabled- Widescreen support- Comfortable control... and moreThe great block- pixel based shooter game, you must have a try.Don't miss it!!! Enjoy! TIME TO DO IT. Wait, what? I'm curious how much more likely a game is picked up if it looks like Minecraft. Pretty likely, I'm guessing. Else I can't explain why Infocom would rely on Minecraft's style so often—though Minecraft plus Assassin's Creed seems to be a popular, if not a desired mash-up. Even so, Infocom's rip-offs seem ridiculous.

A compilation of over 20 skins for the free Minecraft Birthday Skins Pack, with particular skins highlighted in game.

This is the introduction to Star Wars, done entirely within Minecraft. Warning: Do not watch while eating a Hot Pocket, lest you explode into a supernova of pure nerdiness.

Minecraft players seem to have no problem immersing themselves in Mojang's blocky little world with their naked eyes. Add the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to the mix and things just get crazy. On his YouTube channel inthelittlewood, Martyn shows us how exploring, basic material gathering and survival games against other players work with the headset on. It looks dizzyingly entertaining. I can't wait to see how he reacts to riding a Minecraft rollercoaster. More, please. Minecraft Oculus Rift Mod! (Minecrift + Gameplay) [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

There's a show on Japanese television called Kansei! Dream House ("It's Finished! Dream House"). On it, architects build dream dwellings for regular folks, who do have to foot the bill. And while most of the houses seem okay, some of them are utterly horrible. Often, the architects are acting under some sort of constraint. Sometimes, they're working in a small space. Other times, they are trying to appease the residents. And sometimes, they're just awful architects. The tragic part is that the people who appear on the show are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to have these houses built. And once the dream homes are finished, they are broadcasted across the entire country. The internet—the cruel, cruel internet—is quick to point out if it thinks the houses look dumb (note that it doesn't always think they do). Take this abnormally thin dream house: On 2ch, Japan's largest forum, people began comparing it to a desktop computer. Laughing and pointing ensued. And then, there was the house that was compared to a barn. Here's a barn. Then there was this house that people began comparing to mushrooms—like out of Super Mario Bros. Then, they began comparing it to a public toilet. For reference—you know, in case you've never seen a public toilet. And here is the inside—that is, of the house, not the above toilet. Up there, the people who live here can eat. And then, at night, they can sleep up on a platform, too. Like this. Or this. Or maybe this. The internet is so mean! The public toilet house is perhaps the most infamous abode from Dream House. This image even popped up online—it's a Photoshop, but it might sum up the owners' feelings should they ever venture into a Dream House thread. This spring, Dream House rolled out its latest disaster. This house, which cost nearly US$300,000, is supposed to be modern and stylish. But the resulting home is just...odd. For starters, it's shaped like the letter "E". It's also all glass—which isn't so odd, but this house is right on the street. There's no fence! In the bathroom, you can wave at people in the kitchen. Because. Because. Because. Yeah, that's all I got. While families often bathe together or in public in Japan, folks do like privacy! Even though there are curtains, this layout puzzled many people online in Japan. And now that more and more Japanese people are playing Minecraft, folks have been recreating this dream house in the game, saying things like, "I built my dream house in ten minutes—290,000 bucks!" Then, of course, blow the house up. And for those who don't play Minecraft, there's always LEGO. If you have a couple hundred grand to burn and you don't mind internet cruelty, Kansei! Dream House is frequently looking for individuals looking to build their nightmare home. I mean, dream home. Photos: ニュー速, read2ch, 2ch, 話題, 2log-ch, unkar, Rezonator, ２のまとめ, まんはったん、ニュース２ちゃんねる, Dokiyo, @nagian, http://twitpic.com/cmutmj">@nagian, @LiLiTeA, @tuti_kure, @nobu_tary To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

If the original Star Wars movie was shot in Minecraft, a) we'd be living in an era of time travel (please let us know when Half-Life 3's coming out. Thanks.) and b) it'd look like the video above. One out of two ain't bad. Check out the start of A New Hope, Minecraft-style. The short clip was made by our favorite Star Wars-loving Minecraft fan, a man named Grahame—Paradise Decay on YouTube—who has also rendered Empire Strikes Back's Hoth battle and asteroid chase in Minecraft, A New Hope's trench run and this one. Here are all three of his older shorts in one clip: Maybe LucasArts should give the exclusive Star Wars gaming license to this guy. So good!

With a little bit of experimenting, someone just found out that if you stack minecarts in Minecraft, you can create an endlessly sliding object that never actually stops. Build an ice rink around it, invite some friends and you got yourself your own hockey game. Sethbling built a rink for two players, but this would also probably work easily with multiple teams and in a big arena for enhanced fun. To even further tinker with the idea, the carts could also be used as a steel ball for some weird Minecraft pinball machine. That would be a cool build. Minecraft Air Hockey [YouTube] To contact this author, write to gergovas@kotaku.com