An Unreleased PC Game I Forgot About for 15 Years

As I've posted already, I was really into Lego as a kid. It started at age 5, peaked around age 7 or 8, then flatlined at age 13 (I remember exactly why I drifted away from Lego, which I'll get into later). Naturally I played all the Lego games on PC I could get my hands on, like Lego Island (a languid activity center), Lego Rock Raiders (a kid friendly resource-management RTS), and Lego Racers (a third rate Mario Kart clone). However, there was one Lego game that was really prominently advertised in Lego Magazine around 2001 and I was dying to play it, but it never came out. I never learned why until recently.

Around 2001 Lego came out with a line of action figures fitting into their Lego Technic system called "Bionicle". Unlike other relics of popular culture from childhood, I'm not sure Bionicle has aged so well. For instance I would publicly wear a shirt featuring Pokemon, Mario, Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, or even Lego mini figs themselves today. You wouldn't catch me dead wearing Bionicle merchandise. But as an 11 year old, when a character like Shadow the Hedgehog was the epitome of badassery, Bionicle was my jam. Lego went all out with the marketing for it, rolling out a series of comic books lasting several years, a free mini CD-ROM distributed with CG animated Bionicle short films (basically commercials), a McDonalds happy meal merchandising tie-in, and an interactive online flash game where you could explore the world and help the characters make the story unfold. It was cleverly designed to squeeze more money from kids, since the story involved the color-coded heroes collecting color-coded masks to give them specific powers. So naturally there were "booster packs" for sale with random masks. I remember reading online that some zealot actually collected them all.

I also remember reading that Bionicle was financially successful for Lego, so at the height of this success they began printing ads for an upcoming Bionicle game on PC. I remember lamenting that I owned only an N64 and access to a geriatric Windows 98 PC which belonged to my Dad. But that didn't stop me from gazing longingly at the screenshots. Well, months passed. Then one day while leafing through old Lego magazine issues I saw the ad again, realized the ads had since stopped, and there was no sign of a Bionicle game on store shelves. Around 2002 or 2003 or so I was browsing a Bionicle fan message board where someone posted that Lego canned the game because "it would have taken a super computer to play it." - a playground rumor of the Internet age.



Then 15 years later - last night - I stumbled across this video,



The game looks pretty bland and forgettable. But it is interesting to have some closure. If you don't feel like watching the 20 minute video, basically the company Lego contracted to make the game ran out of money, but they kept working their employees anyway without paying them, then Lego got antsy and bailed. The aggrieved employees took their employer to court and got reimbursed after a legal battle lasting a year. A beta of the game was since leaked online and some fans tweaked it to run in modern Windows on current day graphics cards.

Earlier I said I remember the exact moment I lost interest in Lego. Since Bionicle was trying to be the next Transformers or Ninja Turtles, Lego naturally announced that a feature length Bionicle movie was on the way. I couldn't contain my excitement. I got my Mom to drive me to Wal-Mart the day it came out and I took it home in the form of a shiny new VHS tape.



During my first watch-through I tricked myself into believing I enjoyed it. During subsequent rewatches it dawned on me that the voice acting was kinda cringey, the animation was stiff, and the production values were mediocre. It had a super kid-friendly and G-rated tone that made me reluctant to show it off to other people, which was weird because at ages 11 and 12 I'd show off my Bionicle collection to everyone. I guess in my juvenile world it was my idea of an icebreaker. So the blandness of the movie felt like no longer wanting to introduce a friend who used to be cool but then turned dorky and weird. It also felt strange that Bionicle in 2001 drew me in with a dark, forboding atmosphere. Or at least "dark and forboding" according to my 11 year old standards. Anyway, it sure didn't feel that way anymore in 2003. It might have also had a lot to do with me having long since turned 13 when the Bionicle movie came out, so I was growing a little more jaded and difficult to impress. I didn't mean for it to turn out this way, but the disappointment over that movie led to a siesta from Lego lasting over a decade and a half.

It makes me wonder what it is about some childhood relics that make them enduringly cool while others just rot. I'll still watch and enjoy the 1989 Ninja Turtles movie today. The 1995 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show can be pretty hilarious if taken in moderate doses. I'll still play NES, and I may enjoy it now even more than I did 23 years ago. And I'm gradually warming back up to Lego, although now mundane sets like a cafe with tiny patrons or a scale model of a dump truck enthuse me more now than aliens, ninjas, or biomechanical Maori warriors. Maybe the point of all this is that nostalgia involves a certain level of self-deception, where one only remembers the things that are still cool, not the stuff that’s awkward or was never cool in the first place.