10 Lego Video Game Facts You Didn't Know
advertisement
VOICE OVER: Ty Richardson
WRITTEN BY: Ty Richardson
There's a lot of joy in playing Lego games, and their development history holds a ton of interesting facts! For this list, we'll be looking at fun info surrounding Lego's work in video games. Our list includes A Call for Gotham, Dimensions Lost to Time, Brickified By Nintendo, Lego Star Wars: The Lost Levels, and more!
Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re taking a look at 10 Lego Video Game Facts You May Not Have Known! What tidbits of Lego gaming history do you know? Share with us down in the comments!
These days, voice acting in a Lego game is about as normal as any other video game. It’s been around for so long that it's almost hard remembering the days when characters only pantomimed with a few grunts, groans, cheers, and the like. It wasn’t until “Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes” when we finally got a Lego game with full voice acting…technically speaking. Yes, commercially, it was the first, but the true purveyor had spent a little longer in development. Before “Lego Batman 2”, “Lego City Undercover” was the first to incorporate voice acting while in development. The game didn’t launch until 2013, though, letting “Lego Batman 2” take all the credit a year prior.
Speaking of “Lego City Undercover”, this title from TT Games was a bit of an oddball in terms of release as most games back then were multiplatform like most Lego games today. But “Lego City Undercover” and its 3DS prequel, “The Chase Begins”, remain to be the only Lego games published by Nintendo. Part of the reason for this was because TT Games was approached by Nintendo to develop a game for the Wii U before Sony and Microsoft made dev kits available for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Thanks to a great relationship with Nintendo, TT Games agreed to a deal to make “Lego City Undercover” a Wii U exclusive. Well, until the game was reworked and ported to other platforms in 2017 with parent company Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment acting as publisher.
Poor “Bionicle” went through a tumultuous career in video games, rarely seeing review scores beyond middling. Though there was a game that could have fully realized the IP’s potential, it went through a rather harrowing development period. “Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui” would have seen players taking control of six Toa as they search for their respective elemental masks of power. Alas, “Legend of Mata Nui” developer Saffire was hemorrhaging money, leading to constant delays in payment for its dev team. On top of that, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 prompted Lego to demand all violence be removed from the game. “Legend of Mata Nui” would be canceled in October 2001, a mere two months before its supposed launch window, and Saffire was forced to close its doors. Luckily, the project was rediscovered by fans after an alpha build was leaked, and a team of fans formed a studio, Litestone Studios, to finish what Saffire started, finally releasing the full game in August 2019.
While “Lego Island” was the first Lego video game for many, some might be confused and attribute it as the first Lego video game. That is simply not the case. “Lego Fun to Build” was released two years prior to “Lego Island’s” 1997 release. However, its choice of platform was rather…strange. Ladies and gentlemen, the SEGA Pico! This laptop for kids was developed by SEGA to introduce a variety of edutainment games, some of them even being “Sonic” edutainment games. “Lego Fun to Build” allowed kids to play a small selection of minigames involving vehicles and various Lego sets. It also featured a mode where kids could use digitized bricks to build their own creations. Crude, yes, but a modest step for Lego’s foray into games.
When playing “Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga”, did anyone stop and wonder where some of the extra levels came from? These extra levels are “Anakin’s Flight” for Episode I and “Bounty Hunter Pursuit” for Episode II. Originally, these two were going to be included in the original “Lego Star Wars” game released in 2005. Though it has never been specified as to why they were axed, we speculate it might have been a mix of short development time and technical performance. After all, the few vehicle levels in “Lego Star Wars: The Video Game” are super linear and basic in design. For the ambition TT Games was aiming for, there probably wasn’t enough time and/or money to flesh out each and every one. And so, the three that remained were redesigned so the team could put more of their efforts into the core gameplay.
Though TT Games staff former and current might share some horror stories on development, the ugliest we’ve seen is “Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga”. In the last few months leading up to launch, Polygon published an exposé about “Skywalker Saga’s” insanely hectic development. Numerous TT Games employees came forward about troubles with management ranging from strict turnarounds to obsolete tools and methods. However, the most surprising revelation was how aggravated the devs were working with TT Games’ new proprietary engine, NTT. Staff were ignored several times when management was advised to switch development to Unreal as NTT was causing a myriad of issues including features missing that other engines offered, elongating the time to create even the most basic animations, and even straight up failing to properly save files, resulting in the loss of hours upon hours of work. The backlash that spawned from this report caused TT Games to publicly announce they would no longer develop their games on NTT, meaning “Skywalker Saga” will be the only game to ever be developed on NTT.
Back in the old days of TT’s Lego games, it was not uncommon to see some titles get entirely reworked versions for Nintendo DS and PSP. But…for phone? Mobile ports of console games come and go, but for “Lego Batman”, it was an entirely different game. “Lego Batman: The Mobile Game” was published in 2011, three years after the original game, and it played more like a side-scrolling platformer. No other Lego game had such a drastic change like this between their console and handheld versions. The folks behind this were California-based studio Glu Mobile, which has worked on an extensive number of mobile games before being acquired by Electronic Arts in 2021.
With so many licensed Lego games under its belt, why hasn’t TT Games branched out beyond the Disney and Warner Brothers catalogs? Well, there was a point where Agent 007 could have had his own Lego games. After the success of “Lego Star Wars”, TT Games managed to get a “Lego James Bond” game in the works after getting approval from all parties required: MGM (the movie rights holders), Activision (the video game rights holders), the Broccoli family (the owners of James Bond), and even Lego themselves. Unfortunately, “Casino Royale”, the first Bond movie featuring Daniel Craig as 007, caused the project to be shut down. “Casino Royale” is notoriously known to be the most grisly and graphic of the Bond films. With the gritty direction, Lego felt it conflicted with their family-friendly image, thus pulling their approval for the project.
Looking back, it definitely feels like the toys-to-life scene came and went without much of a bang as accessories became more expensive for not just parents and collectors, but for publishers and manufacturers as well. “Lego Dimensions” ceased further development after belting out various packs for roughly two years. Though according to former TT Games staff and leftover bits of data, a third year of toys was planned. Such IPs include “Looney Tunes”, “Despicable Me”, “Captain Underpants”, “Shrek”, “Godzilla”, “Tom and Jerry”, “Minecraft”, “Megaman”, and a variety of movie monsters from Universal. Unfortunately, all we know are the IPs involved and not which franchise would get what kind of pack. We gotta say it’s a weird lineup, but it would have been cool to see.
One of the most surprising IPs mentioned in our previous entry has to be “Minecraft”. Recent years show that “Minecraft” and Lego go hand-in-hand for obvious reasons, but the two had a rocky rough start early in the partnership. “Minecraft” developer Mojang once was involved in creating a game for Lego in a similar vein as their legacy IP: a game where players could explore, build, and create objects out of Lego bricks. Alas, troubles arose not from finances, development time, or even tech, but from Lego’s legal department according to former staff from both Mojang and Lego. Despite the project falling apart, Lego had apparently considered outright buying Mojang. Thing is that $2.5 billion is a lot to fork over just to compete with Microsoft, especially when the MMO service you invested a ton of money into just kicked the bucket.
Voice Acting
These days, voice acting in a Lego game is about as normal as any other video game. It’s been around for so long that it's almost hard remembering the days when characters only pantomimed with a few grunts, groans, cheers, and the like. It wasn’t until “Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes” when we finally got a Lego game with full voice acting…technically speaking. Yes, commercially, it was the first, but the true purveyor had spent a little longer in development. Before “Lego Batman 2”, “Lego City Undercover” was the first to incorporate voice acting while in development. The game didn’t launch until 2013, though, letting “Lego Batman 2” take all the credit a year prior.
Brickified By Nintendo
Speaking of “Lego City Undercover”, this title from TT Games was a bit of an oddball in terms of release as most games back then were multiplatform like most Lego games today. But “Lego City Undercover” and its 3DS prequel, “The Chase Begins”, remain to be the only Lego games published by Nintendo. Part of the reason for this was because TT Games was approached by Nintendo to develop a game for the Wii U before Sony and Microsoft made dev kits available for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Thanks to a great relationship with Nintendo, TT Games agreed to a deal to make “Lego City Undercover” a Wii U exclusive. Well, until the game was reworked and ported to other platforms in 2017 with parent company Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment acting as publisher.
You’ve Met With a Terrible Fate, Haven’t You?
Poor “Bionicle” went through a tumultuous career in video games, rarely seeing review scores beyond middling. Though there was a game that could have fully realized the IP’s potential, it went through a rather harrowing development period. “Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui” would have seen players taking control of six Toa as they search for their respective elemental masks of power. Alas, “Legend of Mata Nui” developer Saffire was hemorrhaging money, leading to constant delays in payment for its dev team. On top of that, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 prompted Lego to demand all violence be removed from the game. “Legend of Mata Nui” would be canceled in October 2001, a mere two months before its supposed launch window, and Saffire was forced to close its doors. Luckily, the project was rediscovered by fans after an alpha build was leaked, and a team of fans formed a studio, Litestone Studios, to finish what Saffire started, finally releasing the full game in August 2019.
It All Starts With a Single, Pixelated Brick
While “Lego Island” was the first Lego video game for many, some might be confused and attribute it as the first Lego video game. That is simply not the case. “Lego Fun to Build” was released two years prior to “Lego Island’s” 1997 release. However, its choice of platform was rather…strange. Ladies and gentlemen, the SEGA Pico! This laptop for kids was developed by SEGA to introduce a variety of edutainment games, some of them even being “Sonic” edutainment games. “Lego Fun to Build” allowed kids to play a small selection of minigames involving vehicles and various Lego sets. It also featured a mode where kids could use digitized bricks to build their own creations. Crude, yes, but a modest step for Lego’s foray into games.
Lego Star Wars: The Lost Levels
When playing “Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga”, did anyone stop and wonder where some of the extra levels came from? These extra levels are “Anakin’s Flight” for Episode I and “Bounty Hunter Pursuit” for Episode II. Originally, these two were going to be included in the original “Lego Star Wars” game released in 2005. Though it has never been specified as to why they were axed, we speculate it might have been a mix of short development time and technical performance. After all, the few vehicle levels in “Lego Star Wars: The Video Game” are super linear and basic in design. For the ambition TT Games was aiming for, there probably wasn’t enough time and/or money to flesh out each and every one. And so, the three that remained were redesigned so the team could put more of their efforts into the core gameplay.
Sacrificed to the NTT
Though TT Games staff former and current might share some horror stories on development, the ugliest we’ve seen is “Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga”. In the last few months leading up to launch, Polygon published an exposé about “Skywalker Saga’s” insanely hectic development. Numerous TT Games employees came forward about troubles with management ranging from strict turnarounds to obsolete tools and methods. However, the most surprising revelation was how aggravated the devs were working with TT Games’ new proprietary engine, NTT. Staff were ignored several times when management was advised to switch development to Unreal as NTT was causing a myriad of issues including features missing that other engines offered, elongating the time to create even the most basic animations, and even straight up failing to properly save files, resulting in the loss of hours upon hours of work. The backlash that spawned from this report caused TT Games to publicly announce they would no longer develop their games on NTT, meaning “Skywalker Saga” will be the only game to ever be developed on NTT.
A Call for Gotham
Back in the old days of TT’s Lego games, it was not uncommon to see some titles get entirely reworked versions for Nintendo DS and PSP. But…for phone? Mobile ports of console games come and go, but for “Lego Batman”, it was an entirely different game. “Lego Batman: The Mobile Game” was published in 2011, three years after the original game, and it played more like a side-scrolling platformer. No other Lego game had such a drastic change like this between their console and handheld versions. The folks behind this were California-based studio Glu Mobile, which has worked on an extensive number of mobile games before being acquired by Electronic Arts in 2021.
The Man With the Golden Brick
With so many licensed Lego games under its belt, why hasn’t TT Games branched out beyond the Disney and Warner Brothers catalogs? Well, there was a point where Agent 007 could have had his own Lego games. After the success of “Lego Star Wars”, TT Games managed to get a “Lego James Bond” game in the works after getting approval from all parties required: MGM (the movie rights holders), Activision (the video game rights holders), the Broccoli family (the owners of James Bond), and even Lego themselves. Unfortunately, “Casino Royale”, the first Bond movie featuring Daniel Craig as 007, caused the project to be shut down. “Casino Royale” is notoriously known to be the most grisly and graphic of the Bond films. With the gritty direction, Lego felt it conflicted with their family-friendly image, thus pulling their approval for the project.
Dimensions Lost to Time
Looking back, it definitely feels like the toys-to-life scene came and went without much of a bang as accessories became more expensive for not just parents and collectors, but for publishers and manufacturers as well. “Lego Dimensions” ceased further development after belting out various packs for roughly two years. Though according to former TT Games staff and leftover bits of data, a third year of toys was planned. Such IPs include “Looney Tunes”, “Despicable Me”, “Captain Underpants”, “Shrek”, “Godzilla”, “Tom and Jerry”, “Minecraft”, “Megaman”, and a variety of movie monsters from Universal. Unfortunately, all we know are the IPs involved and not which franchise would get what kind of pack. We gotta say it’s a weird lineup, but it would have been cool to see.
Rip-Off Lego or…Lego Rip-Off?
One of the most surprising IPs mentioned in our previous entry has to be “Minecraft”. Recent years show that “Minecraft” and Lego go hand-in-hand for obvious reasons, but the two had a rocky rough start early in the partnership. “Minecraft” developer Mojang once was involved in creating a game for Lego in a similar vein as their legacy IP: a game where players could explore, build, and create objects out of Lego bricks. Alas, troubles arose not from finances, development time, or even tech, but from Lego’s legal department according to former staff from both Mojang and Lego. Despite the project falling apart, Lego had apparently considered outright buying Mojang. Thing is that $2.5 billion is a lot to fork over just to compete with Microsoft, especially when the MMO service you invested a ton of money into just kicked the bucket.
