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Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

isle.pizza

31–40 of 75 posts

Re: Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

#31

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 c…

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

You have to click the red arrows a couple times then go through the rotating door.

I don't remember struggling with it much as a kid tbh.

I've thought about what I used to do with computers before and realized I used to have way more patience with them than I do now. I remember suffering a lot of the stupidity in qbasic and Turbo Pascal when I was 11. I don't think I would tolerate that today. Lego island seems similar.

Re: Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

#32
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nintendo and Lego are on the same level when it comes to sue people for trademark violations. There are several cease-and-desist orders against YouTubers for calling no-name bricks legos .

Off-brand toy bricks are a direct threat to LEGO's bottom line, which is in the business of selling toy bricks, and only has its popularity as a moat.

Copies of old LEGO games floating around online are effectively just free LEGO advertising, so the situation may be quite different here.

Re: Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

#33
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo and Lego are on the same level when it comes to sue people for trademark violations. There are several cease-and-desist orders against YouTubers for calling no-name bricks legos .

Off-brand toy bricks are a direct threat to LEGO's bottom line, which is in the business of selling toy bricks, and only has its popularity as a moat. Copies of old LEGO games floating around online are effectively just free LEGO advertising, so the situation may be quite different here.

> only has its popularity as a moat

From my experience they also have quality as a moat. No budget manufacturers seems to be getting the tolerances Lego is getting. There could be producers that are getting there though, but I don't know them.

Re: Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

#35
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo and Lego are on the same level when it comes to sue people for trademark violations. There are several cease-and-desist orders against YouTubers for calling no-name bricks legos .

Probably because they are "lego bricks", not "legos", in the same way that you don't call a bag of rice "rices"

If we are being pedantic, they are called “LEGO”.

Re: Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that companies usually ignore fan projects like this and don't mention them at all. If they would mention and tolerate them, it weakens their intellectual property in a future lawsuit. Once fan projects get too much traction, companies have to cease and desist them because that's the way intellectual properties work in the law. It usually has nothing to do with whether it was a cool project or not, it's just tha…

Amusingly I actually have Video of Atari's Lead of Marketing playing OpenRCT2 on Stream, giving away RCT2 Keys to promote RCT World. To this day, Atari has left us alone though, so yeah it's pretty much not worth it to them to try anything.

If I recall correctly, somebody found out that the original creator of the game, Chris Sawyer, despises the OpenRCT2 project -- but he can't do anything about it, because the rights belong to Atari.

Re: Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser

#40

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 c…

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.
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