LEGO Magazines!

[emily]

It's interesting as it's mostly ads...but there's no comics.

Based on Miniland.nl's scans, I would guess that around that time Bricks 'n' Pieces would usually reprint The Adventures of the LEGO Maniac comics from MANIA Magazine as Adventures in X/The LEGO Adventurer in X, where X is a title appropriate to the theme featured. For the November/December issue of MANIA, though, there was a comic composing nearly the entire issue. I would assume that the Bricks 'n' Pieces editors had other content they wanted in their Christmas issue, and so made the decision to omit the comic entirely. While there seemed to have generally been a delay between a comic's publication in the US and the UK, the comic in the September/October MANIA issue was tied to the US Scooby Doo contest, so Bricks 'n' Pieces couldn't really publish that one either, I would assume.

 

EDIT: Issue 14 of LEGO World Club Magazine is translated and available for your viewing pleasure! Let me know if you run into and grammatical errors or typos in the translation.

[lol username]

Wow, those LEGO Racers and LEGOLAND pages are great! That early car builder screenshot is new, as are both of the early LEGOLAND screenshots.

[BobaFett2]

Yeah, that car builder is a little more visually interesting.

 

What's different in the LEGOLAND screenshots from the real game?

[le717]

The Racers car builder... man, I'd love to have that in-game. Why'd they have to make it so boring later on? Also, isn't that the PS1 cursor?

And, uh, did anyone else notice Rocket Racer and his car are different? He wears a gray outfit, this one is more white, his hair is a different color, and his car is built much differently. Is this new, or have I just not seen this before?

[lol username]

Is this new, or have I just not seen this before?

It's not new, you haven't seen this before. It's not just his outfit that's lighter, it's the whole image.

[Mr. Ash]

Interesting beta screenshot. The garage there looks a lot better than the one released, and that car base would have been cool in the game. Also, the HUD kind of looks like a mix between LR1's final HUD and LR2's to me.

[Jimbob]

Clearly LEGO Racers changed a fair bit from Beta to final release, as Rocket Racer aged enough to go from brown hair to black.

And he probably crashed that Beta car a few times in his late teens, resulting in him rebuilding it to the final release model.

[emily]

I've finally got the November/December 1999 issue of World Club up. New Time Cruisers comic that picks up where the Rock Raider/Trains one left off.

 

Wow, those LEGO Racers and LEGOLAND pages are great! That early car builder screenshot is new, as are both of the early LEGOLAND screenshots.

Glad to hear that they are indeed new images.

 

Yeah, that car builder is a little more visually interesting.

 

What's different in the LEGOLAND screenshots from the real game?

The user interface is significantly different,  the visitors all look the same, and the small pyramid with a "Desert Safari" sign over it is new. The bi-plane attraction looks new to me, but I haven't played LEGOLAND in a while, so I could just be forgetting it.

 

Interesting beta screenshot. The garage there looks a lot better than the one released, and that car base would have been cool in the game. Also, the HUD kind of looks like a mix between LR1's final HUD and LR2's to me.

It seems that there are a lot of people that like the early garage design. I thought it looked nice, too - I think it is especially striking in contrast to the simplicity of the final garage. No way to really know why they changed it, but to throw out a random guess, maybe they thought the more detailed background was too visually distracting.

[BobaFett2]

I'm certain that there's a bi-plane attraction. Not sure about Desert Safari, but I feel like it was one.

 

The original one felt a little like the inside of a building in LEGO Island.

[lol username]

Hah, interesting Time Cruisers comic, though as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be very much of an overarching plot to the whole thing... It just does whatever it wants to.

[emily]

Issue 8 of LEGO Adventures! has been added. I'll be putting up the other not-new magazines over the course of next week.

 

I'm certain that there's a bi-plane attraction. Not sure about Desert Safari, but I feel like it was one.

 

The original one felt a little like the inside of a building in LEGO Island.

Ah, alright. Looking more closely, I see that the pyramid is attached to the attraction behind it. I hadn't noticed that earlier. The ride is definitely not new, but I checked just to be sure and in the final game the pyramid entrance is replaced with a Jungle-style construction.

 

Hah, interesting Time Cruisers comic, though as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be very much of an overarching plot to the whole thing... It just does whatever it wants to.

True enough. It is looking as if there is at least a glimmer of character development, though, which would be fantastic if it turns out to actually be there. My only concern is that the entire conflict between Tim and Ali may have been established for the sole purpose of making Ali's stunt with the money case at the end more comedic, in that he disregards Tim and refuses to stop causing serious problems. We'll know for certain soon enough, though.

[lol username]

Wonderful, now that space port technician guy has at least three names. Great going LEGO.

[BobaFett2]

Wonderful, now that space port technician guy has at least three names. Great going LEGO.

I like to think of him as a generic character, like that Policeman. Obviously he's a character, but he's also another character, and so on.

Obviously this is arbitrary (all Rock Raiders are individual characters, same with Alpha Team and Adventurers), but I think it makes more sense to think of it that way. The same applies to any other City Center/Town Jr. (I forget which was the name of Town at this time) characters like that.

[emily]

Finished up the last of the magazines sent by Cyrem. I was going to take on LEGO Magazine next, but I decided to quickly do the two 1996 Shop at Home catalogs I have first. I find them to be great companions to MANIA Magazine, and the next one even has some exclusive minifigure biographies. The January 1996 catalog is up.

 

Wonderful, now that space port technician guy has at least three names. Great going LEGO.

I like to think of him as a generic character, like that Policeman. Obviously he's a character, but he's also another character, and so on.

Obviously this is arbitrary (all Rock Raiders are individual characters, same with Alpha Team and Adventurers), but I think it makes more sense to think of it that way. The same applies to any other City Center/Town Jr. (I forget which was the name of Town at this time) characters like that.

Alternatively, one can assume that the one figure just has a long full name, and goes by different parts of it at different times for no discernible reason. The fellow's real name is Technician Christopher "Com Link" Robert Donovan. Obviously.

 

Not really, though.

[BobaFett2]

Haha, obviously.

 

Edit: You're missing a lot of pages. A bunch in the 10s.

[Pranciblad]

Man, new lego catalogs have almost made me forget that there was a time where you could see the whole line of sets in the print catalog instead of having to go online. And the accessory packs and "under $10 deals" are now in the rare to non-existent category last I checked. Not that you could really do them with today's inflated prices.

[BobaFett2]

Missing 11-16

[emily]

Missing 11-16

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that. The copy I have has had those pages removed by whoever owned it before me, so unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it.

[BobaFett2]

Aww. I bet it's the part where you order stuff. I remember my older catalogs (which I no longer have) having multiple pages to send in (at least two), which is at least 4, and I don't see those there. I think the catalog exclusive ones were also sent in, which would make six, explaining it all.

[emily]

The Summer 1996 Shop at Home has been added. Not to restate myself (except that I am restating myself), but there are a few minifigure Up Close and Personal biographies that never appeared in MANIA Magazine. If you wanted to jump straight to them, there is a handy directory on the third page.

[lol username]

Cool character bios. Kinda wish we had names/bios for Aquanauts besides Jock, though - if there are any I haven't seen them yet.

[BobaFett2]

Fun stuff, although they're kind of silly (which isn't unusual for TLG).

[emily]

The first issue of LEGO Magazine has been added. Incidentally, this was in the issue:

 

 

Johnny Thunder travels the globe and discovers adventure at every stop! Try his latest challenges on the Colorado River and in the Australian Outback - if your dare!

 

Did this ever go up on the LEGO website? I hadn't heard of it until I read through this issue for the first time after re-obtaining it, and forgot to ask about it until now.

 

Cool character bios. Kinda wish we had names/bios for Aquanauts besides Jock, though - if there are any I haven't seen them yet.

I'm not aware of any others either. I would guess that there weren't any more in the US, though - the ambiguity they treated Jock with (by depicting him as two different figures intermittently) made me think that they weren't thinking too much about the Aquanauts individually.

 

Fun stuff, although they're kind of silly (which isn't unusual for TLG).

The general silliness of the US marketing (including the catalogs and magazines) of the 1990s makes it one of my favorite periods in LEGO media. Nothing in it had to make any real sense because everything was made up of loosely defined and imaginative concepts and themes. The Royal King could go skiing in his free time, and a futuristic underwater astronaut who must always be on the lookout for precious crystals to ensure his survival could operate a fast food chain on the side. Johnny Thunder could go on a quest through space and time to get a few Christmas presents. It was utter nonsense - but delightful.

[BobaFett2]

WaitwhatJohnnythunderinspacewhatisthatmustsee...

 

I DO remember a game on an archive of the site that Biomediaproject does not have and which cannot be played on the archived page. It may have been in the Australian outback, it definitely was not on the river. I didn't start using a computer until around the year 2000, and I didn't see a river game then, so I doubt that there is one.

 

Those Redini jokes are cute. I loved him as a kid.

[emily]

WaitwhatJohnnythunderinspacewhatisthatmustsee...

 

I DO remember a game on an archive of the site that Biomediaproject does not have and which cannot be played on the archived page. It may have been in the Australian outback, it definitely was not on the river. I didn't start using a computer until around the year 2000, and I didn't see a river game then, so I doubt that there is one.

 

Those Redini jokes are cute. I loved him as a kid.

This issue of MANIA magazine has the Johnny Thunder comic I was talking about in it. He travels to the worlds of all of the major 1998 themes (or at least runs into sets from them).

 

Too bad that it seems like the Colorado River thing and maybe the outback one too were never online. The magazine's description was kind of vague, so maybe they weren't actual games? At least in that case there is some possibility they could be dug up on the Wayback Machine.

 

EDIT: Oh wait. I just realized that it's just this.