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Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

263 points| foxtacles | 8 months ago |isle.pizza

72 comments

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tempaway43563|8 months ago

I remember watching my young nephew play Lego Island and the introductory video where the camera flies around the island is amazing. But then he was totally baffled by the 'main menu' when some excited lego guy babbles instructions at you in flowery hard-to-follow language, and you had to do abtract things like write in a book or drag icons onto the map before you got to do anything fun like racing cars. I think he could have clicked around that screen for hours and never realised he had to drag the people onto the map.

Great game but they wouldn't make it like that now. Its like a grown ups idea of an interface that a young child would like, rather than something actually tested.

prophesi|8 months ago

To be fair, after you enter your name in the book, the Infomaniac tells you that you have to drag a portrait on to the map to begin the game.

butlike|8 months ago

Part of the game is discovery and clicking and moving things around is a core gameplay mechanic. That being said, 1996 game UX was a little rough around the edges, as you said.

rmwaite|8 months ago

I think kids are smarter than you give them credit for. You’re right that they randomly click around and will do so for hours. But they /will/ do so for hours. And when it finally clicks - that time was not entirely wasted. Kids in my observation essentially brute force everything. Their one resource is time and they will happily use it for as long as they feel.

blabla1224|8 months ago

I never played this game before and I got stuck with the main menu as well :)

brettermeier|8 months ago

I also struggled and quit after 10 seconds or something not getting onto the island ^^

msgodel|8 months ago

Holy cow that's incredible. I remember playing this when I was ~6 on Windows 95 and being able to walk around and everything was so cool. Now it runs in the browser.

The decomp approach seems surprisingly effective. I know someone else did this with starcraft to get it to run on ARM and said it was the wrong way to do it although I think he did it all in assembly instead of trying to get something sane out of it.

Sarkie|8 months ago

God I love MattKC and his randomness

ycombinatrix|8 months ago

Incredible! Was this based off MattKC's decompilation?

Klaster_1|8 months ago

Yes, MattKC mentioned this is his last LI video.

lpa22|8 months ago

this is one of those games that lives in my head. the quirky narrator and the personalities of all the characters felt really unique at the time.

seeing stuff like this, and backyard baseball, again in browser or modern apps just doesn't hit the same though

favorited|8 months ago

Oh man, this is great timing – I played the hell out of this game in middle school, and I've recently been investigating either getting it running on modern hardware. I got it installed & launching inside an XP VM, but that is (unsurprisingly) not ideal.

I've been thinking about building a retro gaming PC for these kinds of games, and now I can kick that can a little further down the road.

Jotalea|8 months ago

I haven't been in the time this game was popular, but I cannot deny that making it playable in a web browser is crazy. And to all the people that did play and enjoy it back then, I think they'll have a happy surprise.

SwiftyBug|8 months ago

I'd love to be able to play Lego Island 2.

ranger_danger|8 months ago

How is this legal? Specifically, distributing copyrighted assets and using their name/logo without permission.

perching_aix|8 months ago

It isn't. It will stay up only until they get sent a strongly worded email/letter by LEGO. Experience it while you can.

ktkaufman|8 months ago

TL;DR: it's in a gray area, but nobody with power actually cares (at least for now), so it's effectively fine.

As I understand it, Lego is aware of the project (there's been a significant increase in interest in Lego Island in the past few years, with attempts to obtain the original source code) and simply does not care. It's an ancient IP and can't realistically compete with anything new, at least not in a way that would significantly affect Lego's revenue. This is not unlike the way several other companies have acted when their respective older games have been given the same treatment; if a fan project is not actively causing problems (reputational, financial, etc.), most companies will just leave it alone. For companies that actually seem to care about public opinion (as opposed to, say, Nintendo), I think it's fair to assume that the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan project, however legally justified it might be, far outweigh any possible benefits.

skibz|8 months ago

This is impressive on so many levels. What an absolute nostaliga trip! Thank you for this.

kristoff200512|8 months ago

It's interesting. Can I add it to my website to showcase it?

johnea|8 months ago

What about Mata Nui?

ycombinatrix|8 months ago

Isn't that a Flash game? You can already run that in a browser today.

iqandjoke|8 months ago

It hangs after I try to inspect elements...

foxtacles|8 months ago

It has trouble with regaining focus at times. Try switching back and forth between the game and another tab/window and it will recover eventually (the hanging is just the game being paused when it goes out of focus)