Lego Island
Mar 28, 2020 9:26:37 GMT -5
Post by anayo on Mar 28, 2020 9:26:37 GMT -5
My "games beaten" list as of late March 2020 looks like this:
1) Quake
2) Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (human campaign)
3) Blood
4a) Mechwarrior 2 Pentium Edition: Jade Falcon Campaign
4b) Mechwarrior 2 Pentium Edition: Wolf Clan Campain
5) Mechwarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy
6) Doom 2
7) Lego Island
Adjectives that 29 year old me would use to describe Lego Island:
-vapid
-pointless
-obnoxious
-limited
-quaint
Adjectives that 7 year old me would use to describe Lego Island:
-exciting
-witty
-high tech
-captivating
-magical
Kids sure do perceive the world differently than adults. In 1997 I was obsessed with Lego. I had a subscription to the Lego magazine. It was basically 20 pages of ads that you had to pay for, but my parents got it for me anyway. It starred a mascot called the “Lego Maniac”, a skinny blonde kid with big sunglasses and even bigger ‘tude. I think the artist who designed him was reading from the same playbook as whoever drew the cast of the Burger King Kids Club.
In 1997 Lego magazine began advertising the heck out of Lego Island, an upcoming Windows PC CD-ROM game. They treated it like a grand countdown (only X days until Lego Island comes out!). It was all I could think about. I would tell my friends at school, showing them Lego magazine’s multi-page expose full of sterile, plastic-looking CGI renders of the island and its inhabitants. Was Lego Island the first Lego video game ever? I’m not sure, but I do know that back then Lego games were not commonplace like they are now. The idea of a Lego video game seemed pretty weird and novel at the time.
My Dad told me he’d buy me Lego Island if I got good grades. Unbeknownst to me, our state of residence had a rather low-ranking school system by national standards. A year and a half later, when we moved to another state, my new school had to put me in a remedial math class because my old school hadn’t successfully taught me division and multiplication. But the irony of this was lost on me when I got all A’s on my report card and my Dad took me to the store to buy the game. I think we went to office depot or some similar retail place with aisles full of big box computer software.
Lego Island wasn’t just a game disk and a manual, it included other stuff. One bonus was an actual Lego figurine of “The Infomaniac”, a tour guide with a white mustache and a red uniform. My parents’ house wasn’t completely finished back then, so there was a lot of bare exposed drywall. One day I got the bright idea to stick the Infomaniac’s head inside of a hole in the drywall. But I did so with his cap on his head. When I pulled him back out, his cap popped off and tumbled down inside the wall. I was pretty distraught over that. His hat is probably stuck inside the wall today.
Lego Island also included a comic book containing some lore about the island. At the time I didn’t realize how tonally weird it all was. If memory serves, The Infomaniac and The Brickster (the game’s villain) were brothers who were also omnipotent Lego builders. (The comic didn’t outright say they were gods, but they basically gods.) One day, the Brickster grew jealous of the Infomaniac’s creations. Some kind of fratricidal spat reminiscent of Cain and Abel ensued and ultimately the Infomaniac had to lock up the Brickster for everyone’s safety.
There was another weird inclusion in the character biographies. It featured portraits and random personal trivia about all the playable characters, but then also showed a black and white photo of a square-jawed surfer Lego guy with a caption reading something to the tune of, “This is Pepper’s father. He disappeared long ago. No one knows where he went. Pepper hopes he might come back one day.” (Pepper is a playable character and athletic skater lego kid with ‘tude). It’s very odd realizing now that 7 year old me didn’t see anything off-kilter about any of this.
My 2020 playthrough of Lego Island was a strange experience. The entire game takes place on a sparse, fairly confined 3D map with NPCs milling around. When you walk within earshot of the NPCs, they’ll dispense silly dialog or perform a skit. It’s possible to enter some of the buildings - but only about half of them. (For instance as a 7 year old I was bummed out that I couldn’t enter the bank. They even went to trouble to put an NPC outside the bank who tells you, “Sorry, we’re closed.”) The ones you can enter contain a mini-game hosted by an obnoxious guy who gives you a pun-laden introduction then instructs you to build a vehicle, such as a Jeep, helicopter, jet ski, or F-1 race car. You can’t build whatever you want, rather you must follow the exact instructions or else the pieces won’t connect. Building the F-1 racer and jet ski leads you to a race. There is only one track for each race. Also, the game runs at 6-12 frames a second. The gameplay loop is really odd.
Kids are more easily impressed by the sight of familiar, recognizable things. As a kid, I remember delighting in the sight of random Lego sets and components within Lego Island. For example, on the southeast corner of the island, there’s a police station. I used to look at pictures of this police station set in Lego’s mail order catalog (back when it was more commonplace to order things from catalogs rather than websites) and it just seemed so cool to see it in polygonal 3D. It’s also easier to make kids laugh. Wacky, exuberant antics don’t do much for adults, but kids eat it up, and Lego Island has a lot of that. Also in 1997 3D computer graphics were still very high tech. The media is saturated with them in 2020, but in the late 90’s just the sight of 3D animation was a treat.
The only aspect of this game that really holds up for me during adulthood is the soundtrack. It’s so eclectic, polished, and fun. I’ve listened to it dozens of times. I would liken it to an instrumental version of They Might Be Giants:
I don’t think the original Lego Island has ever been re-released in any form or fashion. Not that I think that’s a major loss. This game probably wouldn’t hold any appeal to adult newcomers except for those who played it as a kid and want a trip down memory lane. I’m not sure what kids in 2020 would think about it. As a kid in 1997 I adored it, though.
1) Quake
2) Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (human campaign)
3) Blood
4a) Mechwarrior 2 Pentium Edition: Jade Falcon Campaign
4b) Mechwarrior 2 Pentium Edition: Wolf Clan Campain
5) Mechwarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy
6) Doom 2
7) Lego Island
Adjectives that 29 year old me would use to describe Lego Island:
-vapid
-pointless
-obnoxious
-limited
-quaint
Adjectives that 7 year old me would use to describe Lego Island:
-exciting
-witty
-high tech
-captivating
-magical
Kids sure do perceive the world differently than adults. In 1997 I was obsessed with Lego. I had a subscription to the Lego magazine. It was basically 20 pages of ads that you had to pay for, but my parents got it for me anyway. It starred a mascot called the “Lego Maniac”, a skinny blonde kid with big sunglasses and even bigger ‘tude. I think the artist who designed him was reading from the same playbook as whoever drew the cast of the Burger King Kids Club.
In 1997 Lego magazine began advertising the heck out of Lego Island, an upcoming Windows PC CD-ROM game. They treated it like a grand countdown (only X days until Lego Island comes out!). It was all I could think about. I would tell my friends at school, showing them Lego magazine’s multi-page expose full of sterile, plastic-looking CGI renders of the island and its inhabitants. Was Lego Island the first Lego video game ever? I’m not sure, but I do know that back then Lego games were not commonplace like they are now. The idea of a Lego video game seemed pretty weird and novel at the time.
My Dad told me he’d buy me Lego Island if I got good grades. Unbeknownst to me, our state of residence had a rather low-ranking school system by national standards. A year and a half later, when we moved to another state, my new school had to put me in a remedial math class because my old school hadn’t successfully taught me division and multiplication. But the irony of this was lost on me when I got all A’s on my report card and my Dad took me to the store to buy the game. I think we went to office depot or some similar retail place with aisles full of big box computer software.
Lego Island wasn’t just a game disk and a manual, it included other stuff. One bonus was an actual Lego figurine of “The Infomaniac”, a tour guide with a white mustache and a red uniform. My parents’ house wasn’t completely finished back then, so there was a lot of bare exposed drywall. One day I got the bright idea to stick the Infomaniac’s head inside of a hole in the drywall. But I did so with his cap on his head. When I pulled him back out, his cap popped off and tumbled down inside the wall. I was pretty distraught over that. His hat is probably stuck inside the wall today.
Lego Island also included a comic book containing some lore about the island. At the time I didn’t realize how tonally weird it all was. If memory serves, The Infomaniac and The Brickster (the game’s villain) were brothers who were also omnipotent Lego builders. (The comic didn’t outright say they were gods, but they basically gods.) One day, the Brickster grew jealous of the Infomaniac’s creations. Some kind of fratricidal spat reminiscent of Cain and Abel ensued and ultimately the Infomaniac had to lock up the Brickster for everyone’s safety.
There was another weird inclusion in the character biographies. It featured portraits and random personal trivia about all the playable characters, but then also showed a black and white photo of a square-jawed surfer Lego guy with a caption reading something to the tune of, “This is Pepper’s father. He disappeared long ago. No one knows where he went. Pepper hopes he might come back one day.” (Pepper is a playable character and athletic skater lego kid with ‘tude). It’s very odd realizing now that 7 year old me didn’t see anything off-kilter about any of this.
My 2020 playthrough of Lego Island was a strange experience. The entire game takes place on a sparse, fairly confined 3D map with NPCs milling around. When you walk within earshot of the NPCs, they’ll dispense silly dialog or perform a skit. It’s possible to enter some of the buildings - but only about half of them. (For instance as a 7 year old I was bummed out that I couldn’t enter the bank. They even went to trouble to put an NPC outside the bank who tells you, “Sorry, we’re closed.”) The ones you can enter contain a mini-game hosted by an obnoxious guy who gives you a pun-laden introduction then instructs you to build a vehicle, such as a Jeep, helicopter, jet ski, or F-1 race car. You can’t build whatever you want, rather you must follow the exact instructions or else the pieces won’t connect. Building the F-1 racer and jet ski leads you to a race. There is only one track for each race. Also, the game runs at 6-12 frames a second. The gameplay loop is really odd.
Kids are more easily impressed by the sight of familiar, recognizable things. As a kid, I remember delighting in the sight of random Lego sets and components within Lego Island. For example, on the southeast corner of the island, there’s a police station. I used to look at pictures of this police station set in Lego’s mail order catalog (back when it was more commonplace to order things from catalogs rather than websites) and it just seemed so cool to see it in polygonal 3D. It’s also easier to make kids laugh. Wacky, exuberant antics don’t do much for adults, but kids eat it up, and Lego Island has a lot of that. Also in 1997 3D computer graphics were still very high tech. The media is saturated with them in 2020, but in the late 90’s just the sight of 3D animation was a treat.
The only aspect of this game that really holds up for me during adulthood is the soundtrack. It’s so eclectic, polished, and fun. I’ve listened to it dozens of times. I would liken it to an instrumental version of They Might Be Giants:
I don’t think the original Lego Island has ever been re-released in any form or fashion. Not that I think that’s a major loss. This game probably wouldn’t hold any appeal to adult newcomers except for those who played it as a kid and want a trip down memory lane. I’m not sure what kids in 2020 would think about it. As a kid in 1997 I adored it, though.