[HN Gopher] Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser
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Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser
Author : foxtacles
Score : 236 points
Date : 2025-06-22 23:03 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (isle.pizza)
(TXT) w3m dump (isle.pizza)
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| Incredible! Was this based off MattKC's decompilation?
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Yes, MattKC mentioned this is his last LI video.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| How is this legal? Specifically, distributing copyrighted assets
| and using their name/logo without permission.
| ktkaufman wrote:
| 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.
| rincebrain wrote:
| Specifically, I would assume the calculus is about "how much
| damage does this do by existing" versus "how much risk is
| there that we attempt to shut it down and sue and set a
| precedent by losing", and because for most projects the first
| value is tiny and the second value is potentially enormous,
| companies leave them alone.
|
| When either value changes drastically in scale (e.g. a
| project does something making it very cut and dry which side
| of legal precedent it falls on, or to massively increase the
| damage to The Brand(tm)), that's when you get worried.
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| 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 that there's
| way too much money at stake when not defending your IP.
| eskathos wrote:
| Is there any way for a company, Lego in this case, to adopt
| a fan mod or remake, to make it legitimate IP/copyright
| wise?
| Krutonium wrote:
| Absolutely. They just have to license it, and that
| license can be for a nominal (think $1) cost.
|
| That said, Lego doesn't own the game, so if it came down
| to it, they could strip all the references to "Lego" from
| it and probably be fine.
| Krutonium wrote:
| 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.
| reddalo wrote:
| 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.
| WA wrote:
| 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_.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Probably because they are "lego bricks", not "legos", in
| the same way that you don't call a bag of rice "rices"
| Y_Y wrote:
| > you don't call a bag of rice "rices"
|
| Well I didn't until now
| supplied_demand wrote:
| If we are being pedantic, they are called "LEGO".
| stuaxo wrote:
| I don't know why, but the US invention "legos" is
| incredibly grating.
|
| Its like a whole country called spaghetti "basgetti" as
| kids and just went with it.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Not really a US invention, pretty sure countless other
| languages will transform the word the same way. I know
| mine does, being an agglutinative one.
| al_borland wrote:
| This is how I feel when I hear or see people use the word
| "maths", but I simply accept the cultural differences in
| language.
|
| Though I don't think throwing an "s" on a word to make it
| plural, even if technically incorrect, is on the same
| level as "basgetti". Adding an "s" to words to make them
| plural, is generally a good rule, there are just some
| exceptions, and not that many people are deep enough into
| Lego to know it's one of those exceptions.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Don't worry, at least we don't call them legi
| rf15 wrote:
| consider: bologna
| paulddraper wrote:
| "Lego" is Danish origin.
|
| "leg godt" = "play good"
|
| ---
|
| What your word of choice? "Miniature building blocks"?
| tempaway43563 wrote:
| Absolutely nothing should be getting called "legos", dear
| god, its "lego" or "lego bricks"
| indigo945 wrote:
| 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.
| wickedsight wrote:
| > 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.
| debugnik wrote:
| > the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan
| project
|
| Just last month LEGO shut down Masks of Power, the Bionicle
| fan game. They were really close to a release and LEGO had
| allegedly met the team and given them permission in the past.
|
| I'm increasingly convinced that fan projects should be
| developed quietly and announced right on release, so they at
| least exist somewhere on the internet if they get shut down
| immediately after.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Yeah I don't understand why fan projects aren't already
| developed anonymously to prevent issues from happening.
| paulddraper wrote:
| It's definitely not a "gray" area though it may well be true
| that no one cares, so it's effectively fine.
| perching_aix wrote:
| It isn't. It will stay up only until they get sent a strongly
| worded email/letter by LEGO. Experience it while you can.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I doubt there will be a letter... there's been an enthusiast-
| driven project to remake Lego Rock Raiders (Manic Miners if
| you're interested) for years now, and not only is Lego aware,
| they've actually provided some of the original assets for the
| game (the intro movie and some misc. graphics) to help the
| project along. As long as no one is monetizing it they don't
| seem to much care.
|
| Which like... is the balanced view IMO? Like nobody is making
| money off this or the Manic Miners project, it's not
| detracting from any games Lego is actually releasing right
| now, and absent those factors, it's essentially free
| advertising and building community goodwill. I wish more
| companies would take this "it's not hurting us, just let it
| be" route for fan projects instead of guarding their IP like
| a dragon.
| c12 wrote:
| Agreed, LEGO aren't like Nintendo.
| avipars wrote:
| Lego is primarily a toy company, where Nintendo is a video
| game company (primarily).
|
| Even though, both companies have a lot of overlap.
| msgodel wrote:
| 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.
| Titan2189 wrote:
| Here the Video telling the story behind the port
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUNdWnI5BTk
| btown wrote:
| https://youtu.be/gthm-0Av93Q is also a fascinating dive into
| the decompilation process here!
| iqandjoke wrote:
| It hangs after I try to inspect elements...
| foxtacles wrote:
| 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)
| lpa22 wrote:
| 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
| Sarkie wrote:
| God I love MattKC and his randomness
| tempaway43563 wrote:
| 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.
| brettermeier wrote:
| I also struggled and quit after 10 seconds or something not
| getting onto the island ^^
| msgodel wrote:
| 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.
| prophesi wrote:
| 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.
| tempaway43563 wrote:
| Yes but that only works if the child is listening. Children
| dont listen to wiggly mad dudes waving around on the screen.
| They just randomly click around and giggle at things.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Gross generalization. Some are smarter than that.
| jkrems wrote:
| Nothing to do with "smart", or at least that's mostly
| irrelevant to this observation. But it's definitely age-
| dependent. No matter how "smart", it's not fair to expect
| young children to immediately and fully pay attention to
| some "random" voice when other interesting things are
| going on at the same time.
| prophesi wrote:
| They'd do well to play more games like this then! All of
| the Humongous Entertainment games in particular have a
| special place in my heart. There's nothing much intuitive
| about these 90's/00's point-and-click games, but that's
| mostly the point; to let kids click around and see what
| works in an entertaining fashion.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Is the child like 3? He needs to learn to listen. Valuable
| life skill.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I'm notoriously bad at figuring out video games but was
| able to grok this at the age of 7. It probably had more to
| do with the fact that education in the 90s placed a decent
| emphasis on computer literacy (e.g. "Mouse Practice" for
| Mac Classic) so I was hip to the drag-and-drop paradigm. I
| don't have kids but I've read that most grow up on touch
| interfaces these days due to the ubiquity of tablets so I'd
| imagine that the mouse context is foreign to them.
| blabla1224 wrote:
| I never played this game before and I got stuck with the main
| menu as well :)
| butlike wrote:
| 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.
| skibz wrote:
| This is impressive on so many levels. What an absolute nostaliga
| trip! Thank you for this.
| fastball wrote:
| Who wants to do LEGO racers next?
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Yes yes yes!
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| I'd love to be able to play Lego Island 2.
| johnea wrote:
| What about Mata Nui?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| How is Direct3D retained mode implemented in the browser?
| foxtacles wrote:
| d3drm has been implemented from scratch:
| https://github.com/isledecomp/isle-portable/tree/master/mini...
|
| The entire project can be compiled targeting Emscripten.
| There's nothing particular to the browser implementation
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The last update video I watched from MattKC indicated they
| were still deciding how to approach this. Based on the commit
| dates in that tree, it looks like they must have completed
| it.
| gbraad wrote:
| I believe one of the DevolutionX (diablo) developers did
| this
| Jotalea wrote:
| 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.
| favorited wrote:
| 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.
| lamer3 wrote:
| good.
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