Welcome to LEGO Island!

[Mandrake]

"He-LLO! ¡Hola! Willkommen, bienvenue, konnichiwa! Aloooo-HA! How ya doin'? YO! And in any language, welcome to Lego Island!"

Back in the late 90s, I was a big LEGO fan and spent countless weekends building vehicles and playing with pirate figurines on my bedroom carpet. I also remember going round to my best friend's house and playing LEGO Island on his computer. For most people of a certain age, this was the first 3D open-world game they ever played, predating Shenmue by two years, and they were completely blown away by this lively world full of entertaining characters.



"Ok, let's get started. There's so much to do!"

After signing in and picking a character to play as, you're given free reign to walk around and do whatever you feel like. You can build and drive vehicles, encounter other LEGO people yapping away, take part in races, deliver pizzas, or just chill out and listen to music. You can even customise the island to some extent by clicking on stuff like trees and flowers to change their colour or appearance.



"Watch out for the Brickster! He can trick you!"

You can also accidentally let the Brickster out of jail, which kicks off a series of missions leading up to his recapture before he dismantles the entire island. This was a huge shock when it first happened to me and is by far the most memorable section of the whole game.



Looking back, it really is impressive how much passion went into this game. There's hundreds of voice-lines, the sense of humour is genuinely funny, and the soundtrack is hugely memorable. All the characters have their own personalities and the voice-acting is really strong (and includes June Foray!). It's also a technical achievement considering how most computers had CPUs with a max speed of under 300MHz and didn't have 3D-accelerated graphics cards, which meant everything you see is software-rendered. Best of all, you're encouraged to explore the island for yourself and do whatever you feel like, giving you a huge sense of freedom that the sequels lacked (which were all produced by different studios).



"You know, the only way to visit LEGO Island is to become a LEGO person!"

Frustratingly, LEGO Island is notoriously tricky to get running properly on anything later than XP - it has compatibility problems, it would usually glitch out and crash when you wanted to quit, and there's a bug where the controls were tied to the framerate which makes the turning speed too high. Previously, you would download the fan-developed LEGO Island Rebuilder and ideally install everything inside a virtual machine. However, thanks to a recent fan-decompilation project, the easiest way to visit LEGO Island is to go to https://isle.pizza/ which will allow you to play the entire game inside your browser.

"Thanks for the visit and you're welcome to come back any time! We'll miss you!"

[Kaedal]

I loved the LEGO Island games. I think I remember playing one of them on PC, but primarily I played the GBC version. I think there was only one GBC game in the series?

I never did think of how ambitious it was for its time. A fully open, 3D world with activities before many of todays big franchises even ventured near them.

[EdenCoven]

So many hours spent on this exact screen. This... was sanctuary. Good game

[Lolo De Puzlo]

LEGO Island was one of the few video games I remember ordering out of a catalog. Specifically it was a LEGO one that I remember the shipping time being a whole ass month...

Also I'm glad I could her the opening line of this thread in my head when I read it.

[Mandrake]

I loved the LEGO Island games. I think I remember playing one of them on PC, but primarily I played the GBC version. I think there was only one GBC game in the series?

I never did think of how ambitious it was for its time. A fully open, 3D world with activities before many of todays big franchises even ventured near them.

There were a few sequels to LEGO Island, made by different developers (The first LEGO Island was by Mindscape who, as soon as they realised they had a huge hit on their hands, proceeded to sack all the developers right before release day to avoid paying out royalties ). You probably played the GameBoy Color version of LEGO Island 2, which is alright but not particularly long. I think I managed to complete it in a single afternoon and thought "Oh, is that it?"

Personally, the PC version of Lego Island 2 completely misses the charm of the original, misunderstands who the characters are meant to be, and is considerably more gamified; instead of encouraging players to explore the world, they're forced into a series of linear fetch quests and tedious minigames until you reach the end of the game, after which there's no replay value. The music is less memorable, the voice-acting is atrocious, and most of it doesn't even take place on LEGO Island.