5 replies to this topic

[Brickulator]

About a year ago I had an email conversation with Wes Jenkins (creative director, designer and writer of LEGO Island) and he mentioned the following:

Quote

Mindscape had a long term contract with LEGO in the beginning and I was designing a bunch of other games that we were excited about but politics and business ended their relationship. We had an underwater one, an archeological one in the desert and a pirate one and I was looking forward to doing a cowboy one. Anyway- I was asked over to the new place in London after Mindscape chose their course of action and did some product brain storming and consulting on stuff but had to stop because I had to get surgery and then the company dissolved.

I'd assume the underwater game would have been based on Aquazone, and the archaeological game on Adenturers (Egypt). The pirate game would of course have been the classic Pirates theme and the cowboy game would be the Western theme.

Just posting this to see what people think about these projects and whether anyone knows anything more about them.

[jamesster]

Various members of RRU have been in contact with Wes over the past year or two, and each time, he's mentioned something about these canceled games, but not a whole lot. Combining the bits and pieces he's said to various people (including what you just posted), we know the following:

• Counting LEGO Island, Mindscape had a total of six games planned, making for five canceled games.
  
• The underwater game was called Beneath the Phanta Sea, the desert archeological one was called DIG.
  
• The names of the three others are unknown, but one was Pirates themed and another Wild West themed.
  
• The six core LEGO themes at the time were Town, Space, Castle, Pirates, Aquazone, and Wild West, with Adventurers (desert) coming a few years later. It is likely but unconfirmed that the fifth game was based off of either Space or Castle.
  
• A TV show for BBC was also planned, and a pilot episode was animated by Delaplane Creative (the same people who did the pre-rendered cutscenes for LI1), but it was rejected by LEGO. The pilot episode revolved around the Pirates theme, and involved pirates stealing LEGO pieces from kids while they were asleep. Wes says he has a DVD of it.

I've compiled what we had before here: http://lego.wikia.co...s_and_a_TV_show But of course, it doesn't include what you just posted, as I made that blog post back in April 2011.

[Brickulator]

Thanks for the info, very interesting stuff. The stuff about the cave door in particular I think is interesting, I'd never heard that and it's nice to have an answer to that mystery after all these years.

[McStudz]

Yeah, Wes has said the same general thing to me about a year ago. I've just started to contact him again after almost a year (I stopped after his brother died).

And Brickulator, if you're interested, I have a LEGO Island fansite over yonder: http://green-redbrick.forumotion.ca/ I had Wes on there once (As a running joke, Lair and jamesster kept saying "Wes posted on your site."), and I'm trying to get back in touch with him again. We have some good stuff on there, so be sure to check it out.

[Katatonic717]

I would have loved an Aquazone game.
An adventures game would be even better.
Wellp, it's up to us gentlemen. We need to put out heads together and make a subpar game that no one will ever play!
No wait, that's a horrible idea.

[le717]

Déjà vu...

It seems I've seen this topic before. The first time, I saw it on the mobile site, and someone created a new topic about the Mindscape games. The first person to comment was Jamesster, who listed stuff that we already knew, and after him other people started talking. And that's the same way I found this one, and it's the same order. But this was just created Sunday afternoon... 0_o