Nintendo has unveiled a new map debuting soon in Splatoon 2. However, this particular level won’t be joining the game’s usual stage rotation; rather, it will only appear during Splatfest events.

The new map, dubbed Shifty Station, will only be available in the stage rotation during Splatfests, the in-game competitions that have players choose one of two opposing teams and compete to earn points for their side. Nintendo says the map’s layout changes between Splatfests, so players will be battling on a different version of the map each time it appears in the game.

Shifty Station will presumably debut with the game’s first Splatfest, which is coming up during the first weekend of August. Nintendo hasn’t announced timing details for the event just yet, but like the Splatfest World Premiere demo that took place the week before Splatoon 2 released, this particular competition will also revolve around food. This time, players must choose which condiment they prefer: mayo or ketchup?

Splatoon 2 launched for Nintendo Switch on July 21. The game was very well-received when it debuted; critic Kallie Plagge awarded it an 8/10 in GameSpot’s review and called the game “a vibrant and exuberant sequel with enough fresh additions and changes to set it apart from the original.”

Switch-Exclusive Shooter Splatoon 2’s Newest Map Revealed

Minecraft Cross-Play Beta Now Available, Coming To Xbox One Soon

One of the major problems with Minecraft is the number of different editions, with varying level of multiplayer cross-play. This stems from different code bases – the console versions are based on the original Java game, while Pocket/Windows 10 Edition use the same C++ code base. But the upcoming Minecraft PE 1.2 update, nicknamed the ‘Better Together Update,’ aims to address this.

The main new feature in this update is cross-play with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch players. It’s not entirely clear if the current console edition is being replaced, but Mojang says existing owners of Xbox One Edition or Switch Edition will “receive the brand new version of Minecraft for free, and your existing worlds and DLC will come along to the new version with you.” The new version will simply be called ‘Minecraft,’ separate from the various Editions and the PC version (which is now called Java Edition).

A beta version of the Better Together Update is available today for Windows 10 Edition and Pocket Edition, but you won’t be able to try out the cross-play yet. The Xbox One beta required for cross-play will arrive in a few days, but there’s no word on a Switch beta (I’m not entirely sure if the Switch’s eShop supports beta programs).

However, there is still plenty of new content you can try out in the beta right now. Most of the changes were previously only available on the Java and/or Console Editions, so it’s definitely nice to see them arrive on mobile. Here is the full list of new features:

• Stained Glass
• Fireworks (with Elytra boost!)
• Parrots
• Banners
• Armor stands
• Jukebox and music discs
• Recipe Book
• Book and Quill
• Ravines
• COARSE DIRT
• New world start options: Starting Map, Bonus Chest, Trust Players
• New game rules: TNT Explodes, Natural Regeneration
• Added ‘/tickingarea’ command to create areas that still update when no players are there
• Player permissions
• Zombie Villager spawn egg
• In-game host options
• New loading screens with funny and helpful tips
• How to Play screen
• Remix 3D and structure blocks
• Split-screen (Console only)
• World conversion
• Player limit increased on higher end devices
• Maps can be held off-hand
• Ice blocks are transparent

If you want to sign up for the beta on Android, you can join it (or leave it) here. It probably goes without saying that you have to own the game on Google Play first. To join the Xbox One beta, check out the instructions at the source link below.

Minecraft PE ‘Better Together Update’ enters beta, will have cross-play with Xbox and Nintendo Switch

A Londonderry theatre is to host the world’s first play performed by both human actors and avatars – digitised versions of the cast – in the computer game, Minecraft.

Playcraft Live will be performed at the city’s Playhouse Theatre on 14 October.

It will simultaneously be streamed to the world online via the theatre’s website, Minecraft and Youtube.

Slipping between both stage and game world, the story will unfold across different locations and times.

Minecraft is the second-best-selling videogame of all time.

It allows players to build things using cubic blocks and take part in exploration, engineering, crafting and combat.

The game is hugely popular with children and young teenagers.

The production will see the dramatisation of a script, written specifically for Playcraft by Alex Scarrow, author of the teen science fiction series of novels, Time Riders.

The story is based between books one and two of his Time Riders series.

Online audiences will experience the production as a live-stream simulcast.

For those lucky enough to be part of the Playhouse audience, they will be able to see the physical actor on stage communicating the play to them.

‘Completely new’

They will also see a stream of the digital version of that actor, within the Minecraft world, projected onto a screen.

These avatars will be developed and built by Minecraft experts operating from an adjacent room.

Kieran Griffiths, creative director at the Playhouse Theatre, said he was excited to be introducing something “completely new to the world of theatre”.

“The production is hugely ambitious and a definite step into the unknown, but a tremendous opportunity to allow two artistic worlds to come together and learn from each other,” Mr Griffiths said.

The project will also involve renowned creative producer Adam Clarke and digital educators MakeMatic.

It has been commissioned by The Space, which is funded by the BBC and Arts Council England

“I suppose the thorny rose in between is the technology,” Mr Griffiths said.

“Over the coming months we have to remove the thorns and make sure that rose is passed gracefully.

“At the end of it, we hope to produce an educational asset whereby we will see online amateur societies creating their own world within Minecraft.”

Throughout the summer, Minecraft fans will be invited to join in on the production, find out more about the play and contribute to the process along the way.

World first for Derry theatre’s Minecraft play

Minecraft’s “Better Together Update” is rolling out now in beta, for players on Windows 10 PCs and Android devices. That means players on either platform with the beta installed will be able to participate in games from either type of device, together in cross-platform play.

This update was originally revealed at E3 back in June, and includes other feature additions like community servers and a community Marketplace with paid add-ons. There are also a range of new in-game item types, multiplayer host and permission options, and more.

The beta is also set to roll out for Xbox One “soon,” Microsoft says, which will add the gaming console to the cross-platform action. Microsoft also said when the update was announced that it’ll eventually add support for the Play Together Update to iOS, Nintendo Switch and VR devices (Sony was apparently offered the chance to participate in the update for PlayStation, but declined).

To get in on the beta, players will need the Xbox Insider app for Windows 10 and Xbox One, and on Android they’ll need to have Google Play and of course everyone will need a copy of the game.

This could be huge for unifying Minecraft’s massive player community, which is already quite the club.

Minecraft’s cross-platform ‘Better Together’ update arrives in beta

Once every decade or so, a game comes along that becomes more than just a game, more than just a franchise, and evolves into a genuine cultural phenomenon. In the 70s it was Space Invaders, in the 80s it was Super Mario Bros and Tetris. The 90s and noughties brought us Pokemon and Halo.

If you had to choose one title that broke out of the relatively niche world of gaming over the past decade, it would have to be Minecraft.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or should that be block?) somewhere, you’ll probably know about it.

Even if you’ve never played it, you’ll have seen the cuboid characters and trademark pixelated art style on everything from toys to t-shirts. Minecraft is designed with creativity at its core, allowing players to build their own objects, structures – even entire worlds out of 3D textured blocks in a procedurally-generated environment.

It actively encourages co-operation and collaboration, allowing thousands of players to work together on group projects, or team up to battle enemies and the elements in Survival mode. Its open-ended, sandbox structure means that there’s no beginning or end to the game, and players are limited only by their own imaginations.

After selling 130 million copies to date, its already the world’s second biggest selling video game  (behind only Tetris), of all time.

it wasn’t much of a surprise when tech behemoth Microsoft decided to acquire the rights to the intellectual property from visionary developer Markus “Notch” Persson in September 2014. What was surprising was the price; a whopping $US2.5 billion ($NZ3.4b) making it not only the biggest gaming buy-out of all time, but one of the technology industry’s largest ever acquisitions.

Building on success

The future of Minecraft was one of the key focuses of Xbox’s E3 showcase in Los Angeles last month.

After spending that kind of cash on a single game, everybody expected Microsoft to have big plans for Minecraft. The most obvious move would have been to make the game an Xbox and Windows exclusive, but interestingly, the company decided to go in the opposite direction, focusing their efforts on releasing a version of it on practically every format known to mankind.

Seriously, if you own a device that’s capable of running a video game, there will almost certainly be an adaptation of Minecraft for it. It’s on everything from Android phones to Apple TV. Microsoft’s strategy seemed to be proliferation rather than progression, choosing not to mess with a winning formula or release a guaranteed smash hit sequel, but instead to spread the Minecraft seed as far and wide as possible.

This business model made a lot more sense when, at last month’s E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles, Xbox chief Phil Spencer unveiled the company’s grand plan for the the future of the world’s most popular video game.

Ooh, shiny

A fully upgraded lighting system is one of the major improvements in the Super Duper Graphics Pack

The first revelation was that the game was to undergo a complete visual overhaul, which, in typical Minecraft fashion, is to be called the “super-duper graphics pack”.

Ostensibly, this was to take advantage of the new Xbox One X’s 4K GPU, but for a game that has always been deliberately lo-fi and retro in terms of its art style, it did seem like a strange decision to render all these pixelated cubes in Ultra HD.

On closer inspection though, it’s clear that the update is more about visual effects than the graphical assets themselves. While the game retains its trademark pixelart style, it’s the world around it that has been given a new lick of paint..

A side-by-side comparison of how Minecraft looks now, and how it will appear once the new graphics pack is installed.

Dynamic shadows created by Minecraft’s new directional lighting system means that what you see is constantly changing as you move through the world, and the appearance of your constructions will vary depending on where your character is standing and the position of the sun or other light sources. The addition of HDR gives deep blacks and bright colours a noticeable “pop” factor.

Edge highlighting creates clearer, more defined boundaries between individual blocks and a completely revamped water system means that rivers, lakes and streams look more lifelike than ever before.

Of course, you’ll need a 4K monitor to get the most out of this graphical overhaul, but there’s more than enough here to ensure that even gamers using standard 1080p TVs will see the benefit.

Unifying worlds

Perhaps the most exciting revelation however, was that Minecraft would be going cross-platform. Up until now, players have been restricted to teaming up with friends on the same system, meaning the millions of Minecraft gamers around the world have been pigeon-holed and walled off into small, if thriving, communities.

The decision to tear down these walls and bring everyone together on one unified server is  a literal game changer. In a world where everything is about teamwork and co-operation, making it possible for an iPhone user to work with a friend on Xbox or join a grand-scale collaborative construction job on PC means that things are going to get bigger and better.

There’s a lot of potential in this strength in numbers strategy. In one fell swoop, Microsoft and Mojang have created one of the world’s biggest gaming communities.

Large-scale collaborative projects have seen the creation of sprawling worlds in Minecraft, including a full reproduction of the land of Westeros from TV’s Game of Thrones.

Minecraft is already being used in schools as an educational tool and the fact that kids will now be able to hop on their phones at home to continue working on a project they started on their school computer network means that “homework” is going to be a much easier sell for teachers.

Unfortunately, the cross-platform plan won’t include every single format. Sony, Microsoft’s main rival in this generation’s console wars, has refused to come to the party, meaning that PlayStation users won’t be joining in just yet. However, if the Minecraft phenomenon continues to grow at its current rate, you have to wonder if they’ll reconsider and get involved if things start to snowball.

Minecraft: The next generation

Coffee Stain are the studio behind Goat Simulator and Tower Defense Sanctum. “With our ambitious plans for Coffee Stain Publishing, we had to find the right people, and that’s not always easy,” Anton Westbergh, CEO of Coffee Stain Studios and Publishing, says.

“I’ve known Kaplan for 10 years (we even shared a bed once at Gamescom!), and I’m excited to have him join us! Kaplan is great, and shares our core game philosophies; we can’t wait to have him apply his magic on our products.”

Kaplan says he’s a big fan of the studio and he’s excited to work with the team responsible for one of the “weirdest titles in the world” – that’ll be Goat Sim. Coffee Stain will be at Gamescom showing off their new game, Deep Rock Galactic. It looks like Minecraft in space, with dwarves.

Check out the announcement on the Coffee Stain blog.

Ten-year Minecraft veteran Daniel Kaplan leaves Mojang for Goat Simulator

If ever there was an event specifically designed to send the regular Sydney Opera House clientele into a near-fatal frenzy of monocle popping, it was this one: a video game festival hosted at Australia’s most famous cultural icon.

But whatever misgivings one may have about Minecraft at the Opera House, when I arrive the mood is buoyant.

Children weave in and out of bollards, cleaving the air with plastic pixilated swords, taking selfies with giant cardboard renderings of pigs, llamas and box-headed humans. More still stand in line to meet the “celebrities of Minecraft” – a concept that would be impossible to even begin to explain to someone 10 years ago. Others are marshalled into groups, waiting side stage in the concert hall to take part in Australia’s first Minecraft tournament.

The parents take in the scene with an air of contented bafflement.

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Their confusion is understandable: on the surface, Minecraft as a popular game, let alone an international phenomenon, is hard to explain.

Created by Markus “Notch” Persson in 2009, Minecraft is what’s known as a “sandbox” game – a genre typically defined by an absence of clear goals or win conditions, and an emphasis on creation and free-play. In Minecraft you are born without ceremony or context into a world made up of blocks. These blocks can be mined and placed in any configuration the player desires, and for this reason the game is often described as an environment where you can build “anything you can imagine”.

To a degree this is true, although it does suggest that the collective imagination of the hive mind is overwhelmingly preoccupied with creating enormous effigies of Super Mario. In the past, players have used the game’s universe to build painstaking reconstructions of Taj Mahal, the International Space Station and – of course – the Sydney Opera House.

Australia’s first Minecraft tournament is playing out in the main concert hall. With three sessions over the course of the festival, and each session comprising seven rounds with 48 children per round, over a thousand kids will compete over the two days. At the start of each round, four dozen children are marshalled on to stage, organised through a system of coloured wristbands that, throughout the hours I am at the event, I will never understand.

The version of the game used for competition is rapid and combat-based and so this experience is less about the unchained power of the imagination and more about shoving one another into big pools of lava. There is little to no mining or crafting in this iteration of the game, and at the end of each round, the winning children are interviewed by the host, who quizzes them on their strategies, their faces projected on to a gigantic screen at the back of the stage.

According to an astonishingly fashionable kid in a leather jacket and asymmetrical haircut, the trick is to “get a weapon and run”. The host can’t fault this and asks for a high five. Leather jacket kid opts for a fist bump.

Outside the concert hall, the back foyer bar hosts banks of PCs manned (child-ed?) by dozens of kids working on a more recognisable form of the game. Block by block, like the medieval lords of yore, they build enormous garrisons, undertake large-scale agricultural projects and – possibly less like the medieval lords of yore – ward off demented skeletons with swords forged from pure diamonds. This space in the Opera House typically given over to baby boomers quaffing $14 riesling is now full of kids waiting in line (it must be said, far more patiently than I’ve seen boomers queue for riesling) for the chance to make something unique from scratch.

The popularity of Minecraft content on YouTube and Twitch is staggering: in fact, “Minecraft” is the second-most searched term on YouTube, just behind “music”. Perpendicular to the free-play area there’s another line, this one maybe 50 deep, to talk to Wyld and MrCrayfish: two celebrity Minecrafters with massive profiles on both YouTube and Twitch.

These two affable men sit behind a small table and receive their visitors one at a time, leaning in close to hear deeply technical questions from the kids. The overwhelming majority of these questions are impenetrable to the layman, and watching each and every parent nod along with their kid while one of the experts explains an insanely specialised aspect of, say, complex redstone systems, is genuinely heartwarming.

Like the game itself, the sheer scale of Minecraft’s success can be difficult to comprehend. Statistics can tell part of the story. At the time of writing, around 55 million players log into the game each month; in 2016 the game sold around 55,000 copies per day; and in 2014 it was sold to Microsoft for $1.5b, allowing Persson to retire and pursue another of his passions full-time: being insanely cross on the internet.

The lead developer and designer is now Jens Bergensten, a tall, rake-thin and bearded Swede who, throughout the day at the Opera House, will wander into the foyer to greet fans. The first time I see him he’s at the business end of a massive line of devotees, dutifully signing posters, posing for photos and answering questions.

There’s a calm awkwardness about Bergensten. It gives him an air that’s less “mogul at the helm of a multi-billion dollar empire” and more “viking who has become lost at the shops”.

The live event is meant to reflect the ethos of the game, I’m told by the COO of Mojang, Vu Boi, who has travelled with Bergensten to the event. Just as there’s no one way of playing Minecraft, there’s no one way to experience the day.

He’s not wrong about this, but there’s something else too: the game itself is the second-most perfect encapsulation of the seamless meeting of “high” and “low” art that I can think of (the most perfect being the time that Salman Rushdie became addicted to Super Nintendo). Bringing a video game to the hallowed sails of the Opera House is a neat expression of that philosophy.

Minecraft competition brings fights and fist bumps to the Sydney Opera House

‘Minecraft: The Island’ Blurs the Line Between Fiction and Gaming

If you’ve got the urge to spend a few hours running around Chernarus today, you don’t need to boot up Arma 2 or DayZ. Now you can do it in Minecraft, thanks to map-maker Criand who has recreated the entire map in beautiful—and incredibly accurate—blocky glory. Here’s a big gallery of images to scroll through, (I’ve posted a few shots below as well) and there’s a trailer above.

In a Reddit post, Criand says the project began in 2014 and took an estimated 1800 hours to complete. It really shows: the detail is amazing, the various cities, towns, roads, airfields, castle ruins, and landmarks are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent a good amount of time in Arma 2 or DayZ. There’s even an interactive zoomable version of the map.

The Chernarus map isn’t currently available to download, though Criand says it will be “eventually.” In the meantime, there’s a server you can join (no mods required) to check it out, run around, and kill some zombies using the IP play.mcraftz.com.

Chernarus map from Arma 2 and DayZ beautifully recreated in Minecraft

4J Studios released details of the Content Update 48 patch for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition and Title Update 56 for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Included are the normal bug fixes and game changes associated with most patches. New content includes a new Glide track called Canyon, a new Biome Settlers 2 skin pack, and new Terracotta layers added to Tumble. The full patch notes are below.

4J Studios did not release any patch details for any other version of Minecraft that have achievements.

The Xbox One and 360 patches are rolling out now.

Minecraft for Xbox One and 360 Patch Details

4J Studios, the people who are responsible for getting Minecraft over to consoles, have recently spoken to TIME about how they bumped up the performance for Minecraft on Switch; allowing players to play the game at 1080p whilst docked. 4J Studios’ CEO, Richard Reavy explained:

“We did spend some time analyzing our GPU usage and optimizing things before we did this move as well,” he says. “We needed to spend some time looking at the fill rate and being more careful with that, just because of the number of pixels in 1080p. We kind of knew we could do the optimization and we would get there with the performance. But yeah, ultimately, the fundamental problem was switching resolution.”

Reavy goes to on to talk about how each different version of Minecraft has a custom interface to suit the resolution of the console it’s being played on. Switching between docked and undocked mode at any given time could have caused some issues so the team got to work on bringing us an update.

“Every interface seam is handcrafted by our art team to suit the exact resolution of the console it’s on,” says Reavy. “We wanted to make sure the transition was really slick, and that the user wouldn’t notice anything, like it taking seconds unloading one user interface system for another,” he says. “And also because you can dock and undock your console at any point, it can be quite problematic that the user could switch the console at a really inopportune moment.”

4J Studios Explain How They Got Minecraft On Switch To Work In 1080p When Docked

You ever really think about the moon? More specifically, have you ever thought about who owns it? It’s actually a very complicated matter. Fortunately, NBC Left Field is here to break down the basics, complete with illustrations and animations, all of it rendered in Minecraft.

Launched last month, NBC Left Field is a “social video unit” that “aims to reinvent storytelling for viewers who primarily get their news from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,” according to Variety. It features content from journalists around the world, and while some of it is obviously lighthearted—like, for instance, this—it does dig into more difficult topics too, such as a military summer camp for kids in Ukraine, or the challenges and risks facing coal miners in the US.

Microsoft apparently wasn’t involved in the creation of the video, as a rep said the Minecraft team had no comment on it. “But I learned some new stuff about the Moon today!” the rep added. I’d call that a pretty good outcome.

NBC is now using Minecraft to explain who owns the moon

Minecraft on Switch is one of the best uses to date of Nintendo’s hybrid design, delivering a complete rendition of the classic game with full four-player functionality – even when undocked and gaming on the go. But its launch was marred by two factors: a lacklustre 720p resolution even when docked with your HDTV, along with noticeably jarring performance drops in split-screen mode. Developer 4J Studios promised that it would look into a full 1080p upgrade and it has duly delivered – and not only that, despite the 2.25x boost to resolution, performance in some split-screen scenarios is improved too.

The 1080p Switch upgrade is understated in 4J Studios’ patch notes, hidden in a line of bug fixes. It’s the only visual upgrade listed too. According to an interview with the Time website, CTO Richard Reavy says that “everything else is unchanged at present. We really just wanted to make sure jumping up the resolution wouldn’t cause any problems.” Indeed, at launch, Microsoft confirmed that switching resolutions on the fly between Switch’s docked and undocked modes caused issues with the HUD. But on patch 1.06, clearly 4J Studios has overcome the problem, and it all just clicks together.

As you can see in the video and the comparison zoomers on this page, Minecraft’s stark visual style benefits enormously from the resolution upgrade, bringing it right up to our level of expectations for the launch code – and despite compromises in other areas, it even compares fairly well with PS4’s 1080p image too. Native full HD resolution pays huge dividends for anyone using a 1080p TV: we’re no longer at the mercy of Switch’s scaler, and users get a true 1:1 pixel match from the console. And as you’d expect, even the menu overlays run at 1080p.

For a game like Minecraft, a resolution boost is deceptively useful. Of course, this title takes pride in its simplicity, with low res textures used to build a world of blocks. But this jump to 1080p has a big benefit for greater, long-distance views of the land. Looking over your creations at range, the upgrade is impossible to ignore when directly compared to 720p imagery, taken from the launch version of the game. A surprise bonus here is that texture filtering also gets a boost on Switch, with the higher resolution increasing the pixel sample range: this means you get clearer, cleaner surfaces at a tight angle than you did before.

So it’s all gain so far, but are there any sacrifices to get these results? Well, the good news is that the game’s render distance is still set to the same level as before, at between 11 and 12 chunks while docked, while the world size stays at the medium 3072×3072 block setting. As a result, pop-in kicks in at the exact same points as you move through the world. And really, there’s no other visual changes to speak on. The good news is that it was already an acceptable setup on Switch, and nothing is compromised to give the GPU more fill-rate to achieve the resolution bump.

Switch Minecraft’s 1080p patch improves more than just resolution

What we talk about when we talk about Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch should be as simple as this: It took the Kyoto purveyor of mustachioed plumbers and barrel-chucking gorillas years to get Minecraft on the Wii U, but all of two months for it to find a home on Nintendo’s new flagship console-handheld.

Minecraft is available on the Nintendo Switch eShop for $30 as I type this. Having tooled around with it (versus nearly all of Minecraft‘s other incarnations), I can say it’s arguably the finest iteration of Swedish studio Mojang’s magnum opus yet.

No one save Nintendo, Mojang and Microsoft (which bought Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014) knows why it took until December 2015 to bring a Nintendo system into the fold. Nor, had the game arrived sooner, would it have been enough to fire the Wii U’s failing engines. But Minecraft, which debuted in 2011, presently thrives on everything from iOS and Android to Linux and Raspberry Pi. It’s the second-bestselling game in the world by wide margins after Tetris, a game that arrived in 1984. Anyone with a viable platform not working full bore to deal it into their catalogue is surely leaving briefcases of money on the table.

Read more: The best ways and places to find a Nintendo Switch

To be clear, Minecraft for Switch’s allure has more to do with Switch than Minecraft. The Switch, you’re probably tiring of hearing (especially if you’re still trying to find one), goes wherever you do. Drop it in its dock and Minecraft is on your TV, where it’s all but analogous to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. Pluck it from its cradle and it’s in your hands, the experience undifferentiated save for its shift to the Switch’s smaller 6.2-inch screen.

The significance of there now being a continuous TV-mobile version of Minecraft can’t be overstated. At the risk of offending tablet apologists, Minecraft on smartphones and tablets is a wonderful experience marred by poor controls. This has nothing to do with Mojang or Minecraft. It’s the baked-in shortcoming of any 3D first-person 360-degree control scheme yet devised for a multitouch device that lacks discrete buttons and control sticks. What makes Minecraft for smartphones and tablets so compelling is convenience. The console versions have the opposite problem: perfect controls tethered to television boat anchors.

Enter Minecraft for Switch, which to be fair isn’t the utmost version in all dimensions. It offers world sizes up to “medium,” or 3,072-by-3,072 blocks, a massive upgrade from the Wii U’s 864-by-864 “classic” perimeter, but notably shy of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s 5,120-by-5,120 “large” world frontiers. Like all of the console versions, which are developed and maintained by Scottish independent 4J Studios and not Mojang, it can’t interact with the Java or C++ versions that currently colonize PCs, smartphones and tablets (and that Mojang’s Jens Bergensten told TIME last November 2016 the C++ version “will eventually be the main engine and also the main game version”).

Though it includes the colorful Super Mario-themed world previously exclusive to the Wii U version, it’s missing a few features that I assume will appear down the pike. Like language selection (the PS4 and Xbox One versions support more than a dozen others, the Switch version only supports English), game chat during online play (the Switch doesn’t yet support voice chat), viewing Leaderboards or inviting friends (you can see other friends’ sessions and join those, but can’t manually wave them over to yours). Minecraft for Switch also currently lags behind its console peers, lacking recently added features like “Amplified” terrain, or the “Glide” mini game. I asked Microsoft about the latter and was told an update due by the end of this month should bring the Switch version more or less up to par.

But in every other meaningful way, this is what I’ve been wanting from Minecraft for years. It glides at a silky smooth 60 frames per second in the dock, though Microsoft confirmed to TIME that it runs at 720p in both docked and handheld modes, a minor disappointment and one I’d love to see reconciled with an optional 1080p at 30 frames per second toggle. Shift to split-screen, be it two, three or four-way, and the frame rate remains rock solid. [Update: Microsoft notes that Minecraft‘s 720p docked/undocked resolution isn’t a question of system power, but stems from issues currently experienced shifting from one resolution to the other when docking/undocking. It’s possible, albeit not confirmed, that Minecraft for Switch could hit 1080p docked down the road.]

In handheld mode, the game looks crisp and gorgeous on the Switch’s 720p screen, the only compromise being a drop in render distance that’s most visible if you’re surveying potential seeds from on high in Creative mode. Performance is still fantastic here, the exception being large jungle biomes, where the frame rate appears to drop by half (I’d wager 30 frames per second, though still on the side of acceptable). No, you can’t pop the Joy-Cons off and swivel them 90 degrees for impromptu two-player shenanigans, a la Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But given the absence of secondary triggers on each Joy-Con when used discretely, this was probably a fait accompli.

The argument for Minecraft on Switch comes down to two words: continuous playability. If you prefer gamepad to keyboard/mouse or touchscreen controls (as I very much do), you’re stuck with either the Windows 10 or console versions. If you prefer portability, you’re stuck with either the smartphone/tablet or (less impressive) PS Vita versions. In both instances, the idea of continuous play is either impossible or involves tradeoffs. (You can shift between Pocket and Windows 10 interfaces playing in a Realms world, for instance, but you need an Internet connection, and then you’re still having to shift between a gamepad and touchscreen.)

With the Switch, the tradeoffs vanish. Screen real estate aside, you’re having the same experience on an airplane, subway, or in a remote wilderness tent as when docked to your TV. Minecraft is already the finest thing I’ve experienced in this medium, the answer I’d probably give to the one-thing-you’d-want-on-a-deserted-island question. And thanks to Switch, it just got an order of magnitude better.

Review: ‘Minecraft’ for Nintendo Switch Is the Best Version Yet

Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch is about to look dramatically better when connected to televisions, and it’s thanks to the cautionary diligence of its console handlers that we’re seeing it now, a few months after release. The game shipped on May 11 locked in both handheld and TV mode at 720p, pushing on the order of about a million pixels. After the update, it’ll run at 1080p in TV mode, and push over twice as many pixels.

How’d they do it? Microsoft told TIME in May that the reason for the lower resolution involved “issues currently experienced shifting from one resolution to the other when docking/undocking.” The company passed along speculation from 4J Studios that 1080p might be attainable, but it couldn’t promise anything.

I just spoke with 4J Studios CTO Richard Reavy, and it turns out the issue of getting Minecraft for the Switch to 1080p involved double and triple checking the interface — and a bit of performance optimization. (4J develops all console versions of Minecraft.)

Reavy tells me the game needed further optimization to handle 1080p comfortably, but that the studio was confident it could make that happen given sufficient time.

“We did spend some time analyzing our GPU usage and optimizing things before we did this move as well,” he says. “We needed to spend some time looking at the fill rate and being more careful with that, just because of the number of pixels in 1080p. We kind of knew we could do the optimization and we would get there with the performance. But yeah, ultimately, the fundamental problem was switching resolution.”

More specifically, switching the user interface at different resolutions. Reavy tells me the user interface on each of the console versions — besides the Switch, they include the PlayStation 3 and 4, PS Vita, Xbox 360 and One, and the Wii U — have custom user interfaces. “Every interface seam is handcrafted by our art team to suit the exact resolution of the console it’s on,” says Reavy. Everything through May ran at a fixed resolution. But when the Switch arrived, 4J Studios had to grapple with its signature feature: transitioning dynamically between different resolutions without hiccups or pauses.

“We wanted to make sure the transition was really slick, and that the user wouldn’t notice anything, like it taking seconds unloading one user interface system for another,” he says. “And also because you can dock and undock your console at any point, it can be quite problematic that the user could switch the console at a really inopportune moment.” This explains Microsoft’s delay in rolling out the feature between May and now: 4J Studios simply wanted the time to thoroughly vet the user interface while changing resolution at any point while playing the game.

For now, 1080p is the biggest technical revision. The draw distance is still a bit lower than on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you’re limited to “Medium” world sizes (3,072-by-3,072 blocks versus “Large,” which supports 5,120-by-5,120 blocks) and you don’t get the checkbox to create “Amplified” terrain. “Everything else is unchanged at present,” says Reavy. “We really just wanted to make sure jumping up the resolution wouldn’t cause any problems.”

Those differences may fade when, later this fall, Minecraft for the Switch transitions to the much more versatile and scalable “bedrock engine” that currently runs on Windows 10, iOS and Android devices. And it’s at that point things get really interesting, because Microsoft and Nintendo will be doing something that has no industry precedent, allowing Xbox One, iPhone, Windows PC and Nintendo Switch owners to play together in a single, seamlessly backend-unified ecosystem.

We Just Learned How Minecraft Can Do 1080p on the Nintendo Switch

If you’ve got the urge to spend a few hours running around Chernarus today, you don’t need to boot up Arma 2 or DayZ. Now you can do it in Minecraft, thanks to map-maker Criand who has recreated the entire map in beautiful—and incredibly accurate—blocky glory. Here’s a big gallery of images to scroll through, (I’ve posted a few shots below as well) and there’s a trailer above.

In a Reddit post, Criand says the project began in 2014 and took an estimated 1800 hours to complete. It really shows: the detail is amazing, the various cities, towns, roads, airfields, castle ruins, and landmarks are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent a good amount of time in Arma 2 or DayZ. There’s even an interactive zoomable version of the map.

The Chernarus map isn’t currently available to download, though Criand says it will be “eventually.” In the meantime, there’s a server you can join (no mods required) to check it out, run around, and kill some zombies using the IP play.mcraftz.com.

We’ve launched the PC Gamer Club, a membership program that offers ad-free browsing on this site and a bunch of other benefits including a digital subscription to PC Gamer magazine, monthly game keys, access to our private Discord server and more. For all the info, visit club.pcgamer.com.

Chernarus map from Arma 2 and DayZ beautifully recreated in Minecraft

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