Last month, we started wondering what a video game Mt. Rushmore would like. Into it would be carved not the faces of U.S. Presidents, but the heads of four gaming icons.
We liked the idea of a mountain that featured the titans of 2010 video gaming. That made us realize that the mountain itself had to be built in Minecraft, the PC building-block game that was one of the year's most extraordinary and popular games.
We are not, however, expert Minecraft builders. So, with the help of none other than Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft, we put out a call (read: he tweeted it — thanks, Notch!).
Among the potential builders who replied was South Carolina-based Minecraft fan Damien Benoit who assembled a team and built a mountain.
After three different attempts by Benoit's team to build a mountain block by block, the result is what you see up top: A Mt. Rushmore whose face alone consists of 2500 individually-placed blocks. In place of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, we've got Red Dead Redemption's John Marston, the iconic Minecraft man, an Angry Bird and Super Mario.
The mountain is a free-standing structure on Benoit's Minecraft server. He and a half dozen friends built it over the course of a couple of weeks in December, heroically dealing with some tech issues and holiday distractions. They've come out of the project inspired to build a town around their big mountain. Benoit told me he's made a McDonald's, a Starbucks, pyramids, a library, and even a hockey rink.
You can keep track of Benoit's work at his 337Studios Minecraft blog. Thanks for the build, Damien, and good luck with the town!