Atlantis Discovered!

In ancient times, when it was still fashionable to wear bedsheets as clothing, the famous philosopher Plato told the story of a great civilization, the Kingdom of the Atlanteans.

Plato described Atlantis as the big city-state on the block, famous for their wealth and architecture, that one day suddenly vanished. Some say a volcano erupted and sunk the kingdom to the bottom of the sea. Plato himself said the gods, likely angry at the hideous curtain couture, punished the citizens by sending their beloved home into the abyss. Others say Atlantis never existed at all—Plato being fond of his allegories and all that.

Well wonder no more! With the help of modern technology and Minecraft, explorers and seafood enthusiasts alike can see for themselves the wonders of Atlantis. This ancient city of questionable fashion taste returns from the deep, thanks to builder Hyperscale and his friends at TheAtlanticCraft.

Hyperscale came to Minecraft when the game was still in alpha. “I just enjoyed the freedom of it,” he says. “You can do anything your mind could think of.” It was this unleashed imagination that inspired him to start building, first creating “a crude Eiffel tower” and growing from there.

“For the first year or so I just enjoyed building for small servers, just making spawns for fun and learning different ways things can be built by following online pictures/videos. Eventually I starting working together with the YouTuber, TheAtlanticCraft, on the first iteration of Atlantis almost 2 years ago.”

You heard right: two years! This amazing city took a full two years to build! You could get an associates degree in two years, or drive across the world 34 ½ times in two years. Or build an epic underwater kingdom in Minecraft!

Now it wasn’t a straight two years of non-stop building. According to Hyperscale it was “very on and off. Whenever we'd come up with another part of the city we needed, I'd build it.” And Hyperscale is incredibly dedicated to his builds.

“AtlanticCraft and I always want to have the best environment and atmosphere for our animations and videos. So I always have to hand build them to spec!”

It shows. You can see the expert attention to detail in all the buildings: the bank, the hospital, the courthouse. And you can definitely see it in Hyperscale’s favourite structure, the Sky Elevator.

“I loved the style of it, it’s very futuristic and technologically advanced.” But he enjoys his favorite building for more than just the fancy block work.

“The Sky Elevator symbolizes the people of the underwater world advancing and being able to ‘escape’ to the land above. So for me it always stood for learning and evolving and discovering new things!”

Learning new things like how to make a build so large appear underwater.

“I was figuring out how to completely flood it under water for the videos. Just picture me randomly world editing giant blobs of water everywhere above and having it all flow down. I think it was about 4 hours of work to flood the entire inside of the dome (because in game, Atlantis is enclosed in a GIGANTIC stone dome). Then I realized I could of done it out of game in a world-edit program in about 10 minutes.”

Hyperscale continues to work on Atlantis with more huge projects to come. He eventually wants to leave under the sea for something more a part of our world.

“My ‘dream project’ would have to be a giant, but very fleshed out cyberpunk city. Giant floating highways and crazy neon signs everywhere. I think it would make a great atmosphere. With the new blocks that are very bright and colorful, maybe this dream is closer now.”

If you want to take the plunge and see Atlantis from the ground up, check out YouTube series Atlantis Adventures and follow Hyperscale on Twitter.