The history of the title began in early 1995 when Mindscape approached LEGO at the 1995 New York Toy Fair. Following months of brainstorming and business meetings, the project was green-lit by LEGO, and began development in late 1995. The development team was hired in late 1995 and early 1996, and in January 1996 the partnership between LEGO and Mindscape was publicly announced. The game was officially announced at E3 1996 with the working title “Adventures on LEGO Island”. Although intended as the first in a series of LEGO games created by Mindscape, layoffs resulted in at least four subsequent games being cancelled. Following a tumultuous development, the final game was released on September 26th, 1997, going on to win several awards and sell over a million copies.
It was the coolest adventure in my Forest Gump-like career. Ultimately, it was about having fun, seriously.
The project was about providing a fun engaging experience for kids to play, to learn and to interact in a LEGO-eye-view world of make believe, so we had to have fun to do that. It was designed as a toy with gaming features, if you wanted a game to play. LEGO is not about telling you what to do – it's about having undirected fun so we went with a more open playing field. The team that we put together was outstanding kids-at-heart professionals.
