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Correspondance of the Lego Island Creators
Alittle Piece of Lego Island History

Hi, My name is Jamie, and I'm a big fan of the LEGO Island series of games. I was doing some research and found this on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lego_Isl...duced_Sequel.3F Basically, I'm wondering how much of this is true. In short: 1 - Was there another game planned, but canceled? If so, what was it going to be like? 2 - What's this about a TV show? I looked on your website, and I saw you did mention it. Do you have any clips of this? What was it about? 3 - The Wikipedia thing mentioned a script for the LEGO Island Manual/comic that was apparently on your website. Do you have this? If so, could I see it please? I am a HUGE fan of the series, so if you could please answer this I would really appreciate it. Also, do you have a better quality version of this image? http://wesdotcom.com/images/200_news3.JPG Thanks a ton for reading this - can you please give us some answers? I would love to hear about this stuff! Jamie [Last name edited out]

Hi Jamie! That's a cool email to read; made me smile and I like to smile. LEGO island was pretty much one of the coolest adventures I've had. The team involved were great people, friends and co-creators. Scott Anderson was our producer, Paul Melmed, the educational expert, Dennis Goodrow, the Technical Lead and David Patch was the Art Director plus a staff of artist and programmers and sheesh- a lot of folks. I could try and put together a list if you want but I'm getting sleepy. Oh! and the musicians (on the juke box and the radio are really cool folks) and the voice actors and on and on...

Answers to questions: 1> Ha! There were many games planned. Strange politics and "business" cancelled subsequent titles planned and the company (Mindscape) thought it made more money to fire us the day before the product was released (in 1997!) Technology sure has advanced since we started in '95-96 but it was pretty advanced for its day. I was really trying to make a toy that had gaming features and not a "game" where you just kind of blow stuff up or die. We wanted to play and let kids make up stuff.

I have binders full of LEGO games that I designed.

2>It was a prototype, a pilot. A place called Delaplane Creative (formerly Flying Rhino) animators put it together. LEGO wasn't interested but it's pretty cool. I have an old DVD of some of it. LEGO was planning other stuff at the time with robots and transformers and licenses. The pilot show was about the Pirate theme kit and characters with new pirates that basically steal the LEGO Bricks that kids leave around they rooms when they go to sleep. The story is a fun one. 3> The LEGO script is about a 300 page binder. I had designed over 40 characters and they all have about 10 lines each or so in all kinds of places. Sometimes if you just stand in one place (in the game) they'll come up to you. You can always walk away.

Technology sure has advanced since we started in '95-96 but it was pretty advanced for its day. I was really trying to make a toy that had gaming features and not a "game" where you just kind of blow stuff up or die. We wanted to play. I would love to be a part of a LEGO island III though. I miss that place, having spent so much time living on it, it seems.

Mindscape, Inc. in Novato, CA, the company that I and the team was with at the time sold themselves to various companies after they fired us all. I was lucky enough to hook up with LEGO Media International that formed soon after the product release in London. The Gaming industry started to embrace more blow-stuff up games because that's what sells best according to marketing departments so I was phased out and then I had surgery so I had to stay home...except I was asked by the Producer there of LEGO Island II to write the script for LEGO Island II since all the characters in it were my pals. Tim Green was a great guy there who was the producer and he "got it"...I mean, he liked to play. LEGO media then lost interest and decided to have other companies do the games for them

Someone showed me a post on Wikipedia about LEGO Island. I never entered anything on it though; maybe I should. I got stories- in fact, I was once considering writing a book about it once. Now I'm just doing projects for myself or "free-stuff"; not making any money now just making up stories. I was pretty lucky once though. Hey- if anybody wants to hear some LEGO Island stories- I've got the time. So, again, thanks, Jamie, your email was fun to read. Oh- my web site is quite an old dated one but nobody really cares about what I can do anymore...life gets weird.

Best, cheers, ciao and regards, wes Jenkins