Very Surreal Alpha Team Prototype

[jamesster]

Perhaps "Prototype" isn't entirely accurate here, as it WAS going to be the real thing and was close to completion, and only became what it eventually did because of a last minute decision at LEGO. Still, "Prototype" seems more attention-grabbing so I'm using that in the title.

For those who don't know, the Alpha Team theme that lasted from 2001 to 2004 (with a hiatus in 2003) wasn't primarily created by LEGO - the whole thing was an adaption of the video game LEGO Alpha Team, developed by Digital Domain and released in 2000, the year before the sets based on the game hit store shelves. The characters, locations, story, etc were all created by Digital Domain for use in the game, LEGO then adapted what Digital Domain had created and turned it into a proper theme, with real sets and minifigures.

As such, I'm not exactly sure if this topic belongs in LEGO Action Themes or Culture and Multimedia, as it's more to do with the development of the original video game, but the game is what the sets were based on. So I'm gonna post it here for now, please move it if needed.

Anyway, back in October of last year I was digging around YouTube and noticed this video:

(Skip to 1:25 for the relevant bit)

Confused yet?

The animator, Doug Wolf, was kind enough to reply to some of the comments on the video asking about what the LEGO bit was. Here's the comment chain, copypasta'd from YouTube:

Quote

jamessterV2 9 months ago

What's the animation that goes from 1:25 to 2:38? Looks like an animation for LEGO Alpha Team, but aside from Ogel and TeeVee the characters look almost nothing like their counterparts in the finalized game. Was this some early concept animation? Looks really well done. Got any more stuff like that? :D

Doug Wolf 9 months ago

You are correct! Well spotted. That is for the cut scene to the first incarnation of LEGO Team Alpha. I worked on it at Digital Domain with a team for about a month to get the whole thing done. Then it was sent to Lego corporate offices, who loved it, and then immediately said, "By the way.. We have changed all the characters and we wont be using it." Alas... but it will live on in my demo reel forever.

VezonWireless 9 months ago

Along with what jamessterV2 said, I recall hearing from various sources that the LEGO Alpha Team game was originally going to be called the Trans-International LEGO Team. I don't suppose whether or not you can confirm that this is true, and if it is, would 1:25 to 2:38 happen to be starring the cast of the original Trans-International LEGO Team?

Doug Wolf 9 months ago

I cant remember that name exactly, but it was something like that. It is the first cast of Lego Alpha Team. You can read the comment below for what happened at the time. ;(

jamessterV2 = myself, VezonWireless = PeabodySam.

Later, while digging through the Alpha Team video game files, I found asset lists and files and other evidence that the game was intended to have two more zones than the final game. Details can be found here (along with more things posted later in this topic), but in short, Alpha Team at one point had Mountain and Moon (Space) zones, in addition to the four zones in the final game (Tropical Island, Subterranean, Undersea, and Arctic - all but Subterranean were turned into real LEGO sub-themes). I also found object listings for a "Cyberia" zone, and a "Neandert" listing under the section for enemies (more on that later). So it's pretty apparent that Alpha Team went through some heavy changes throughout its development. To get more information, I emailed Tom Mott, the lead game designer. The result was pretty surprising.

Quote

Hi Jamie,

Holy cow, what a great email! I’m glad we have fans.

Yes: it was originally called LEGO Logic and the team was called T.I.L.T. Digital Domain (DD) was coming off the heels of making Barbie Fashion Designer for Mattel, which make boatloads of money (it kept the company afloat while they were doing special fx for Titanic). So DD decided it would be a “digital toy” company. It pitched 5 concepts to LEGO Media – LEGO racers, a virtual LEGO set, LEGO robot builders, a LEGO adventure, and then to round out the list, they threw in a half-baked idea to build wacky Rube Goldberg type contractions – similar to the popular game The Incredible Machine. LEGO already had a number of the other ideas in development but they loved the contraption-builder concept, so that’s what they chose.

The initial idea was to freely mix-and-match themes. So the team consisted of a chef, a gymnast (Flip), a magician, a mad scientist with bouncing powers (Dr. Pogo – our idea was that LEGO would produce a rubber mini-figure instead of hard plastic), and a marching band musician (Major Minor). The chef would flip things in his frying pan; the gymnast would provide spinning motion; the marching band musician would provide forward motion, the magician could teleport things from one spot to another. There were probably other team members – my memory is fuzzy. We had a lot of characters in the game at one point. I recall a “motor” that was a cowboy sitting at his campfire. If something lit his fire, he’d start cranking his spit. So he functioned as a fire-activated motor. The worlds included places like Aromazona, Mt. Fridgy (home to the Neanderthaws – those unfrozen cavemen-type creatures you referred to), Poodle Dreamland, and more. Bill Benecke did the concept art and may still have some of it. I’ll see if he can dig some up and share it. It was really fun.

We were fairly far into full production – animation, building out the worlds, starting to build puzzles – when LEGO Media flew myself and the senior producer to their offices in London to present what we were doing. They hated it. The mix-and-match aspect just didn’t fit in with how they market LEGO themes. We were pulling bits and pieces from themes targeted at 5 year olds, 8 year olds, boys, girls, etc. They told us they wanted to completely revise the idea to base it around a “Mission Impossible” style “Spy” team. Keep it all very blue and black and “boy” oriented. More of a focus on cool gear and gadgets. So we threw out 90% of what we had developed … keeping TeeVee and Evil Ogel … and created Cam, Dash, Crunch, and the rest. It was a bit rushed – we had eaten up a year and a half of production heading in the wrong direction – but all things considered, I think it came out pretty well. I think the abbreviated schedule necessitated cutting the moon base and the mountain hideouts. I’m not sure how developed those ever were though.

If I can find some old files I’ll share them with you. I’m still in touch with a number of the guys who worked on the project too, so I’ll forward your email.

Thanks again for the great email.

Best regards,

Tom

Whoa.

So we talked some more. I sent him links to this and this as examples of what fans have done with the theme, which he loved. Some other highlights:

Quote

A funny anecdote: When we redesigned the characters, we had a hard time getting Dash’s character design approved. I finally told the character designer to just make him look as much like the LEGO Executive Producer (Tom Gillo) as possible. Tom loved Dash’s new look—having no idea we were trying to make Dash look like him—and the character design was promptly approved.

Dash: http://images1.wikia...s/2/20/Dash.jpg

Tom Gillo: http://www.mobygames...51474743-00.jpg

Quote

The two main engineers, Bob Soper and Thomas Miller, went on to work at SONY. They were heavily involved in the God of War series. The Executive Producer on LEGO’s side, Tom Gillo, works for Sony Europe and oversees development of Sony Kinect games. Bill Benecke, who designed the characters and devices, now works at Mattel as a toy and action-figure designer. I’ve mostly worked for LeapFrog for the past 10+ years producing interactive books. LEGO Alpha Team was super fun to work on. Great team. Fun work environment. Loads of creative freedom … until the boot came down those last six months and we rushed to revamp the whole product. Immediately afterwards, Digital Domain shut down their interactive division and laid-off the entire department, so the project has always been tainted for me by that. But you’ve reawakened some nostalgia for the good times we had making that game. Thanks for that.

Bill Benecke, the concept artist for the game, also got involved:

Quote

This is just flat- out wonderful- I never suspected that there would be dedicated fans of Alpha Team, or that they were able to piece together so many bits of what we worked on!!!

Alpha Team was one of the niftiest projects I’ve worked on, and probably the biggest in terms of my career where I look at the designs for our first version and feel a strong dose of “what if…?” tinged with a lot of “if only…!”- especially when I think of Roller Toaster! And Ol’ Blue Ice! And the Neaderthaws! And, yes, Poodle Dream Land.

You’ve really brought a huge smile to my face with this- thank you ☺

More from Tom:

Quote

His email jogged my memory a bit:

The very earliest concept for LEGO Logic was that the things we take for granted in our homes: refrigerators, dog bowls, toasters, are actually powered behind the scenes by incredibly complicated contraptions and loads of mini-figures hard at work.

The look and feel was very much akin to Diddy Kong Racing, or Crash Bandicoot, or Banjo-Kazooie: brightly colored surreal worlds, with fun bosses to defeat. Evil Ogel was meant to be the final boss. As I said, this wasn’t just preliminary concept work: quite a bit of actual production (modeling and animation) was done along these lines before it was all scrapped for the “spy” theme.

Mt Fridgy was a “snow and ice” freezer environment that included a lot of frozen foods: pizza boxes as platforms, ice cream tubs, things like that. The Boss was “Ol’ Blue Ice” and the Neanderthaws were frozen in blocks of ice. If you defrosted one, he’d starting walking in a forward line, swinging his club.

The Roller Toaster was a roller-coaster “hot lava” environment. Roller coaster cars that looked like slices of bread would ride the rails and get toasted by hot pools of lava. The boss was King Crusty.

Poodle Dreamland took place inside a dog pool. It was shades of pink and lavender, with topiary trees, and giant doggy bones. The boss was a killer poodle named Flea-Flea.

Aromazona was a world of giant flowers, inside a flower pot.

And finally:

Quote

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for all the great emails. I’ve forwarded them to the rest of the team. They really made everyone’s week.

Glad you liked the game—good to know there was fans! It was a lot of fun to make. And of course we’re all very happy it spawned a popular LEGO theme.

Best regards.

Wow. Just wow.

So what do you think about this? Should LEGO have let Digital Domain stay with the original, more playful concept? Would it have transferred as well into a real play theme? Would LEGO have actually made a rubber minifigure? Would you have liked minifigures and sets based on this original, more surreal concept? Or was the switch to a "spy" theme a good thing? What about the Mountain and Moon zones that didn't make it in time? We could have had LEGO Alpha Team Space sets! Ah man, I would have gone completely bonkers over those...

Personally, I dunno what to think, as I like both concepts. I LOVED Alpha Team back when it was new on the shelves, and bought every set I could get my hands on. But I also like the idea of a video game taking place inside a house, but viewed from the wacky perspective of the minifigures inside of it. Ah well.

Edited August 26, 2017 by jamesster
Forum upgrades broke some formatting - fixing

[Clone OPatra]

Wow, that's really an incredible story! Great job digging into this. It's always so much fun hearing about things 'behind the scene,' but especially of a whacky concept like this!

I also find it very interesting that it seems the video game company designed the theme, and not LEGO? I would have assumed that LEGO designed things and then commissioned a video game for their theme, but it doesn't appear so in this case. That makes me wonder about other video games at the time, like Rock Raiders. That was surely a theme first, wasn't it? (Although LEGO Island was a game before it became a very strange theme.)

Honestly, I think they went the right route turning it into a cohesive Spy Theme. Given LEGO's general design capabilities at the time, I think a theme based on the original concept would not have translated very well, and would've just seemed like a bit of a mess. Ironically, there now will be a theme with different types of stuff based on The LEGO Movie, but that's a whole different story because LEGO has grown so much since the days of Alpha Team, and being a movie tie-in also helps it work.

I can't say I really loved all of the Alpha Team sets (nor do I own many of them, since I didn't care for many at the time), but I appreciate the theme nonetheless. I really like how LEGO used to take characters and then put them in completely different situations from wave to wave. I suppose Johnny Thunder and Alpha Team are the only true examples of that, but Ninjago comes close too. Other themes where every wave just adds on but doesn't change things (Space Police III, Power Miners, Galaxy Squad and Chima so far) have great stuff too, but putting characters in a whole different setting really has a higher level of charm.

[jamesster]

I also find it very interesting that it seems the video game company designed the theme, and not LEGO? I would have assumed that LEGO designed things and then commissioned a video game for their theme, but it doesn't appear so in this case. That makes me wonder about other video games at the time, like Rock Raiders. That was surely a theme first, wasn't it? (Although LEGO Island was a game before it became a very strange theme.)

Rock Raiders was kicked off by LEGO but developed hand in hand with Data Design Interactive, who was doing the video game. There's actually several places in the game (and even more so in the early game trailers) where you can see prototype versions of the real LEGO sets, as that's all the game designers had to work with at the time. Same story with LEGO Stunt Rally and the 2000 Race theme.

[PenPlays]

This thread put a nostalgic smile on my face. Being such an immense fan of the classic Lego PC games, I would have eaten up Lego Logic. It's funny, though. I thought Lego Island was the only game to get sets later than the corresponding game. Little did my young self know that without those PC games, 3 of my favorite late 90's themes wouldn't have existed!

Time to pull out the 'ol PC games.

[M'Kyuun]

Back stories are always interesting. I liked the Alpha Team sets and had a number of them. The whole spy thing with vehicles that convert to other modes thrills me. It set the precedent for the Agents sets, which nailed the spy theme with just the right touch of satire and a lot of really cool sets.

[obsidianheart]

I have a big, ridiculous soft spot for Alpha Team. I like them as secret agents, and have a hard time picturing them as the original concept portrays them.

I was in my dark ages when Alpha Team came out, but I still picked up the copter, the ATV & submarine, and the underwater exo-suit from wave 2. Later, when Agents came out, and I was out of my dark ages, I bought the heads for all the Alpha Team characters and turned them into the extended Agents team while retaining their original characterizations. Except TeeVee, because I was using his head on a group of evil drones, and also I've never been fond of him, I guess. This meant I had to re-name Agent Charge to Agent Crash since there is an Alpha Team Charge, but whatever. I keep kicking around an idea of building modernized versions of their original sets in Agents colors.

Kinda wish we had gotten that Ogel armor shown in the video, though.

[Legoofmyleg]

I'm trying to think of other themes that may have been designed by the video game team first. What about the Stunt Island theme, that was tied to video games pretty heavily if I recall?

Anyway, really enjoyed your dialogue there and the research. I was a big fan of the Alpha Team series at the time. In hindsight, the sets had a few too many large elements, though better than the average for the time. But on the plus side it was the first spy theme for lego. The colour scheme and style is attractive. And at the time it was one of the better themes available, the early 2000s had little to offer you if you weren't thrilled with Star Wars or Bionicle.

I prefer the changes made, it gave the theme focus. Like Opatra said, the Lego Logic is just too messed up. In fact it reminds me of the Time Twisters, with its pick and mix approach.

[Behind the Camera]

Wow! I never could have believed that one of the video games I played when I was young had such an interesting history! Personally, I prefer the final game, though that may be because Alpha Team was a big part of my childhood. It was also a more focused idea than Lego Logic, anyway. I would have still loved to have seen Ogel's mountain and moon bases, but I guess we can't have everything. Oh, well. Then again, Forrest Blackwell had his own moon base in Lego City Undercover, so I guess that makes up for it (fingers crossed for a Lego set of that!).

[Bricknblue]

Alpha Team had a ton of promise that never really got going, Agents was a much better them overall. But that might have somethign to do with the horrible 2--1 way of thinking LEGO had (make crap). :lol:

I think it's time for a new spy theme, would fit current events. ;)

I have such a soft spot for this set...

http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6774-1

[Oky]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing all this info. I didn't even know that the Alpha Team game preceded the sets. I was never really into the theme as I never played the game and didn't have many of the sets, but I did like the idea and look of it. I like me a good spy theme, and I loved Agents, so I'm glad they made Alpha Team.

I would have loved a game like Lego Logic though as I really liked The Incredible Machine! But I don't think it would have translated into an actual theme very well. It just seems too surreal and disjointed to work and I don't think they would have made a minifig completely made out of rubber either (even though some minifigs today are already half made out of rubber). Plus we have gotten very similar minifigs to those from that version of the game in the CMFs line, so I don't think we missed out on anything.

I find it funny, though, that TLG didn't like the mix-and-matching of themes because it "didn’t fit in with how they market LEGO themes" seeing how they produced Time Cruisers just a few years prior to that meeting. I guess they must have learned their lesson after the failure of that theme. Although they made games at the time that combined themes too, like Lego Racers, so I don't see why they didn't want to make this one. I guess they really wanted a game that they could base a theme on.

An Alpha Team Space subtheme would have been cool, but at least we did get Ogel's rocket, and I think Rock Raiders was the replacement for a subterranean subtheme.

[Walter]

That really is surreal. I can only imagine what Alpha Team would've been like if they hadn't made all those changes.

[AndyC]

Fascinating bit of history. I guess TLG really wanted the game to sell a theme and Time Cruisers was still fresh enough in the memory that nobody wanted to attempt another mish-mash of ideas. Shame because the game sounds like it might have been really interesting. Also funny to see things come full circle and TLG embracing the idea of mixing and matching the various themes for the Lego Movie, you have to wonder whether they'd look upon the same idea differently now.

[Bricknave]

Wow, that was quite an educational read. I had no idea the Alpha Team game came before the sets, and that the Alpha Team almost weren't super-spies.

I think if the mixed team were Minifigs from different established LEGO themes, it probably wouldn't have needed that direction change.

A wizard from the Castle theme could teleport things, a cowboy from the Western line could lasso levers, etc.

Although, I think the super-spy direction change was for the best.

[Behind the Camera]

AndyC, On September 22, 2013, said: Also funny to see things come full circle and TLG embracing the idea of mixing and matching the various themes for the Lego Movie, you have to wonder whether they'd look upon the same idea differently now.

Hard to say. Yes, they are mixing themes for The LEGO Movie, but they also mixed themes for LEGO Universe, and I'm sure we all remember how much of a financial failure that game was for TLG, though I don't think the mixing of themes is what caused the failure of that game.

[Mandate]

The failure of the game lied in poor marketing and a subscription-based model that the entire MMO industry seemed to be moving away from. Lack of content was a big one, there was about a month's worth of content in the original game excluding the updates without it getting very repetitive. That might sound like a lot, but it isn't really. The mixture of themes was a great success, but the biggest problem seemed to be in marketing it. Non-gamer parents were hard at understanding why they need to pay for the game after they've bought it, and they usually had no concept of how PC requirements worked. When the "F2P update", came out, there was a huge boost in membership. But F2P was restricted to one world, et cetera.

Back on topic, very interesting to see how TLG reacts to even pre-finalized concepts. Or at least, how they used to.

[Demetreous]

I do hope my comment is worth bumping this old thread.

This was an incredible story. So much history that I would have never guessed.

It's tragic that LEGO®, a brand of creativity, would rather have a more uniform, stereotypical set of characters then a mashed-up team like the one an average builder would probably have in their collection, compiled from various sets.

When LEGO® released their Minifigures line, it was technically a mashed up theme. And if they wanted to, they could have very well created a team like that of the original Alpha Team gang, and perhaps have made a video game to go with it.

It's also awesome to know the people who worked on the game are still in touch, and have moved on with their careers.

I adore this post.

[Master_Data]

Thanks for bumping this post. That's incredible! It seems like this might have influenced part of The LEGO Movie!

Edited May 15, 2015 by Master_Data

[Exetrius]

Wow, what a story indeed! Someone should bundle these kind of rare insider stories in Lego history and publish it.

[Soupperson1]

Wow the original alpha team game is like a proto dimensions :P

[tomottomott]

Hi everyone, I was the game designer on the LEGO Alpha Team computer game. A little late to the party here -- but I'm happy to see there *is* a party! Or was.

Boot up LEGO Alpha Team and type ~niblik

Let me know how it goes! :-)

[tomottomott]

THE LEGO MOVIE ...

I would love to think that we somehow influenced the guys who directed The LEGO Movie ... but I doubt it. And regardless, The LEGO Movie was leaps and bounds beyond anything we were thinking about. Those guys just hit it out of the park. I *do* think we influenced how LEGO games were *animated* for the next decade or so. The animators at Digital Domain did an amazing job of figuring out how to animate mini figures running, jumping, ducking, etc -- with just the right balance of elasticity and stiffness. Rock Raiders and LEGO Racers hadn't quite tackled that, so we set the precedent.

Back to The LEGO Movie: while it's true that early on in production we had the idea to mix-and-match characters from all the different themes in order to defeat one overall baddie, we evolved away from that pretty quickly. (And besides: ideas are cheap. It's all about the execution. And I'm a big fan of The LEGO Movie.) We veered in a different direction. I mean ... a gymnast, a drum major, a mad scientist, a magician ... not exactly typical mini-figures. And the whole idea of starting out in a human-size house and then jumping into the toaster, dog bowl, flower pot to enter these LEGO mini-worlds of Mt Fridgy and The Roller Toaster -- that's a different direction than actually using the existing themes. It was sort of a mash-up of The Borrowers, Dozers from Fraggle Rock, and and then taking inspiration from games like Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing with their crazy, themed levels and bosses. In LEGO Media's defense: they knew how to market products to 8-11 year old boys, and they needed a specific type of product that they could get behind. From their point of view, it was the right call. And they got a new theme out of it too, which lasted longer than the computer game, so they made the right call.

THE SETS

We didn't realize until the end of production that LEGO was planning to release real-world sets based on the game. They designed those sets entirely on their own. The characters came from us, and maybe in the initial launch, they took some inspiration from the computer game for Evil Ogel's Lair. But LEGO immediately spun the sets out in other directions, and designed a bunch of cool vehicles that we didn't have in the game. I have to admit ... as cool as it was to have worked on the game, it was *really* cool to walk into a LEGO Store and see the characters I had helped design and name on the sides of those boxes!

THE CHARACTERS

As I mentioned in emails a couple years ago, we were having a lot of trouble getting the character design for DASH approved, so I told the artist to just draw to look as much like Mattel's producer as possible. The producer had no idea, but loved the design and finally approved it ("I dunno ... there's just something about Dash's looks that I like!") CRUNCH was a no-nonsense Ernest Borgnine type. RADIA was partly-modeled on a (very sexy) raver girl I had dated briefly a couple years earlier. CHARGE was partially based on Wesley Snipes. CAM -- I think we were going for a Janeane Garofalo type of thing, but we struggled with that character design a bit. I always though FLEX looked a lot like our lead animator, Kevin Jackson, but I'm not sure if that was intentional, or if that was just me.

SIDE NOTE

Four members of the LEGO Alpha Team production team went on to be in Legion of Rock Stars. (YouTube: Fibboxsll)

[jamesster]

Oh, hello again!

Boot up LEGO Alpha Team and type ~niblik

Let me know how it goes! :-)

I tried, but didn't notice anything different - I tried typing it at the main menu, and in levels. Am I missing something? You have my curiosity! What do the letters mean? I know a lot of things related to the NetImmerse game engine are prefixed with "ni"...

(Side note: The MMO LEGO Universe also ran on the NetImmerse/Gamebryo engine, which is a bit funny, as it's the *other* super-colorful LEGO game that had surreal worlds and a one-man-band character, but then got redesigned into a game about a villain turning minifigures into zombies... History repeats itself, eh? )

We veered in a different direction. I mean ... a gymnast, a drum major, a mad scientist, a magician ... not exactly typical mini-figures. And the whole idea of starting out in a human-size house and then jumping into the toaster, dog bowl, flower pot to enter these LEGO mini-worlds of Mt Fridgy and The Roller Toaster -- that's a different direction than actually using the existing themes.

...

In LEGO Media's defense: they knew how to market products to 8-11 year old boys, and they needed a specific type of product that they could get behind. From their point of view, it was the right call. And they got a new theme out of it too, which lasted longer than the computer game, so they made the right call.

True, true - though I still love the earlier concepts too. Especially the idea of surreal LEGO worlds based on real world things from a minifigure's point of view - seems there's a lot of fun stuff that could be done with that concept.

THE SETS

We didn't realize until the end of production that LEGO was planning to release real-world sets based on the game. They designed those sets entirely on their own. The characters came from us, and maybe in the initial launch, they took some inspiration from the computer game for Evil Ogel's Lair. But LEGO immediately spun the sets out in other directions, and designed a bunch of cool vehicles that we didn't have in the game.

Yeah, the initial launch of the theme was definitely the closest to the game. The 2004-05 sets deviated from it the most, but those also had some really fun transforming vehicles (I'm still mad at myself for not getting

).

I have to admit ... as cool as it was to have worked on the game, it was *really* cool to walk into a LEGO Store and see the characters I had helped design and name on the sides of those boxes!

Ah, I'm sure this is every LEGO fan's dream...

THE CHARACTERS

As I mentioned in emails a couple years ago, we were having a lot of trouble getting the character design for DASH approved, so I told the artist to just draw to look as much like Mattel's producer as possible. The producer had no idea, but loved the design and finally approved it ("I dunno ... there's just something about Dash's looks that I like!") CRUNCH was a no-nonsense Ernest Borgnine type. RADIA was partly-modeled on a (very sexy) raver girl I had dated briefly a couple years earlier. CHARGE was partially based on Wesley Snipes. CAM -- I think we were going for a Janeane Garofalo type of thing, but we struggled with that character design a bit. I always though FLEX looked a lot like our lead animator, Kevin Jackson, but I'm not sure if that was intentional, or if that was just me.

SIDE NOTE

Four members of the LEGO Alpha Team production team went on to be in Legion of Rock Stars. (YouTube: Fibboxsll)

Haha, fun trivia! I looked up those names, and yeah, I totally see the resemblances. Radia (the lasers expert) being based on a raver girl is great.

Thanks again!

Edit: We've got the puzzle editor going! Just have to hit enter after typing that. Working out the details here: http://www.rockraidersunited.com/topic/7006-alpha-team-puzzle-editor-and-~niblik/

Edited February 16, 2016 by jamesster

[Maniac4Legos]

A great backstory to Alpha Team, but there's one thing I discovered recently that I couldn't figure out: in the manual for LEGO Alpha Team on GameBoy Color, Ogel is described as being the "arch-nemesis of Dirk Brick and the LEGO Alpha Team". Who is Dirk Brick? He is never mentioned anywhere else in the manual, nor in the video game, and to my best recollection, not mentioned in the sets or the PC version of the game (which was released prior to the GBC version by 2 months). I've searched for hours online finding any crumb of Dirk Brick mentioned anywhere else, and nothing turned up.

I've come up with a few possibilities for who Dirk Brick is:
1) Dirk Brick is the former name of Dash Justice, the Alpha Team leader. Considering Dirk Brick is referred to separately from the Alpha Team, he could be the leader Dash, who has also been referenced separate from the Alpha Team. Maybe a working name before the more on-the-nose name he finally had (Dash - running - Motions Expert).

2) Dirk Brick is the name of an agent prior to Alpha Team (LEGO Logic / TILT). The Instruction manual uses an older render of Dash and Radia, which can also lend itself to the first theory, but can also show this from an earlier stage of the game / story bible. Of the characters in LEGO Logic, 3 of the 5 main characters were named ("a chef, a gymnast (named Flip), a magician, a mad scientist (Dr. Pogo), and a marching band musician (Major Minor)" ), as well as an unnamed cowboy at one point in development, so the name could have belonged to one of them. However, the name doesn't lend itself to anyone's style or talent as the other names do.

3) Dirk Brick is retroactively the name of Spy from CMF Series 16. In Series 16 of Collectible Minifigures (2016), there is a Spy minifigure whose bio suggests, "almost nothing is known about his identity or past" and only nicknamed as "Agent A". He DOES have a recton connecting him to several LEGO themes including Alpha Team, Agents and Galaxy Squad - "His first recorded mission on file was for the organization known as Alpha Team, when he triggered a mind control orb self-destruct program that toppled the evil Ogel’s latest scheme for world domination and freed his brainwashed Skeleton Drone minions. (Full Bio here)". His timeline also refers to the "Zed Incident", which ties back to Alpha Team as well since Zed is the only minifigure to date, non-licensed, to have that name. Is Spy supposed to retcon the name Dirk Brick? Not likely, but in headcanon that can fit well.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Maniac4Legos

[jamesster]

Another website, ObscureGamers, got their hands on a bunch of development material from Data Design Interactive/Artworld UK a while back - the company that did LEGO Rock Raiders, and also the pre-rendered cutscenes for many LEGO games, including Alpha Team.

Not a whole lot of Alpha Team stuff was found in the lot, but they did find an early script for the intro animation, and some conversation between Digital Domain and Artworld. They're still sorting through the full lot - I've just been watching from the sidelines on Discord. I'm not sure if it'd be ok for me to post it here, since they haven't "officially" released it themselves yet, but Dirk Brick was a character that got cut entirely. The final game had you, the player, as the Alpha Team's chief. But in earlier WIPs of the story, Dirk Brick was apparently the leader of the team - there's even a specific part in a message from Digital Domain/LEGO to Artworld asking him to be cut from the intro FMV, where he appeared on the map screen sending Dash on his mission.

I guess I'll come back here and post the script and stuff once it's officially released...?  There's some other fun stuff in there - Dash was named Ray and had a ray gun (potentially also named Bolt briefly), but his gun got cut from the game and his role changed to "motion expert". You can still see a trace of this in the final game data where his textures are named LASERHEAD, LASERBODY, etc. Meanwhile, in the final game data, Radia's textures name her Pip, which is also a name that shows up in the early script. Ogel was named Dr. Ogel, too. They also had a whole car chase sequence planned for the intro, which got nipped in the bud pretty quickly (seemingly before any of it was animated)... Cause Artworld didn't really know much about what the new design for the game's characters, environments, and story were like at the time of writing it, so they just shrugged and put in a sequence that was generally spy-themed. Both parties then decided to cut it as it had nothing to do with the actual game.

Unfortunately, we don't know what Dirk looked like, or what his role in the game would've been besides appearing in the intro.

There is an unknown minifigure in this footage of the LEGO Media office, though, and it'd be roughly from around the time Alpha Team was going through its redesign. Could be Dirk Brick, could be someone else - who knows.

 

Update - I just got my own copy of the GBC manual, and the story section says the Alpha Team solves problems by "deploying wacky devices that have been built out of special LEGO parts". That text can't be found in the PC manual - maaaaybe it's another holdover? It also says "Skeleton Zombies" while the PC game/manual just says Zombies.

Edited April 24, 2021 by jamesster