Development
"Lego Island" was co-created by Scott Anderson, Dennis Goodrow, Wes Jenkins, Paul J. Melmed, and Dave Patch. Wes Jenkins was the only one who worked on any sequels (Lego Island 2 as writer).
Each one served in a specialized field of the game's production & design: Anderson served as executive producer & led the project, Goodrow was the lead programmer & director of development, Jenkins was creative director & writer, and Melmed served as director of education & research. Melmed's contribution was working with Jenkins on designing characters based on psychological research. Dave Patch was the Art Director with a staff of great animators and artists.
Jenkins had previously worked on such games as Mario is Missing & Mario's Time Machine, 20th Century Alamanac, Wings. He would go on to work with Lego Island 2, Lego My Style and Mindscape's Star Wars Chess.
The original title was to be "Adventures on Lego Island"; evidence of this still exists in the game.
When they began, technology was so limited that they considered making the game with a custom 3-D engine, which was used in several id Software titles of the day. In the end, DirectX was chosen.
The actual concept of a 3D game was originally questioned, debated and argued about by the administrators of Mindscape.
Originally, the game was to be part of a series—only one other title was planned and scrapped before production on it could begin: Beneath the Phanta-Sea (the Phanta-Sea was the sea where Lego Island was located). Jenkins later worked on a pilot for a Lego TV series which included some Lego Island characters.
Additionally, various features were planned but not included due to time constraints, several of which were actually referenced by the game; e.g. remodelling buildings.
Several famous voice actors were included in the cast; such as June Foray and David Lander. Jenkins also provided some voice talent.
New software was created to automatically lip-sync the faces to the voice recordings, and the eyes animations were then made by hand. The software was designed so that one could easily alter the software configuration so as to make lip-synching in other languages possible.
A contest was held in which winners would become beta testers on the game.
Read more about this topic: Lego Island
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