LEGO Island Versions
Several versions of LEGO Island are known to exist, either officially released or discovered.
Beta 9.0
A beta dated July 25th 1997 is claimed to exist, according to a post on Rock Raiders United. Not much is known publicly about this build, however a changelog was found on the disc detailing all the beta releases leading up to it.
v1.0 / August Build
This build identifies itself as version 1.0.0.0. It's files date to August 8th 1997 making this is the earliest build known to have had a retail release. Both this build and the September build predate LEGO Island's official release date (September 26, 1997), making it unclear why this circulated in retail at all (considering a newer build was already produced before release). It's theorized that perhaps Mindscape had already manufactured copies of this build, and the changes introduced in the September were considered too insignificant to discard the already manufactured copies.
This version is only known to have been released in English.
v1.1 / September Build
This build identifies itself as version 1.1.0.0. It's files date to September 8th 1997. This is by far the most common version of LEGO Island and the most likely version that any given copy will be, since it existed before the official release date and is the latest official version to be made.
Differences compared to August build
- Key files have been modified and recompiled: This is relevant for any hex editing as the locations of most variables will be different between them. Any specific byte changes will need to accommodate both versions to work correctly for all people.
- Different dialogue: After entering a name in the August build, the Infomaniac says "Good job! Welcome to Lego Island!" before saying "Okay, let's get started!". In the September build, this line is cut and the Infomaniac starts at "Okay, let's get started!".
- Building: During a building sequence, Bill Ding instructs you to hit the triangle when you are finished. In the August build, this is correct as the sequence does not end until you hit the triangle. In the September build, the sequence will auto-complete when you place the last necessary brick. This makes Bill Ding's dialog inaccurate in the September build.
- Window title: When playing in windowed mode, the August build's window title reads "Lego Island" while the September build's reads "LEGO®". This may be the only time the game uses sentence case for the word "LEGO" instead of capitalizing it as usual.
- Character Selection: In the August build, clicking a character's icon in the Information Center does not select that character as it does in the September build. The character is only selected once their icon is dragged to a location. The Infomaniac's animation also has been changed as a result. In the August build, his animation when selecting Mama or Papa Brickolini ends with him flying offscreen before the player transitions to the selected location. Since the September build allows you to select a character without going to a location, his animation has been somewhat crudely modified to position him back at the center of the screen, rather than flying offscreen.
Korean Release
In late 2019 it was discovered that the Korean release of LEGO Island contains logs and source files for the Interleaf files on the disc. These files would have been compiled into Interleaf files with Weaver, which would have been a necessary part of the translation process considering the Interleaf files contain the bulk of the voice clips. While the game itself is unremarkably still v1.1 code and the Weaver tool is still unrecovered as of this writing, these files are extremely interesting insights into the development process.
Future
No later versions of LEGO Island are known to exist. Even when the game was re-released in 2001, the September build was still shipped.
Through interviews with the game's original developers, it's claimed that a patch was written to fix the infamous turn speed bug but it never made it into any release or patch. If the source code hasn't been lost, it could be possible to produce another version with this (and any other patches that could have been made later on) implemented. But this is only speculation for the time being.
Identifying Your Version
Most of the time you can identify your version by checking the "Last Modified Date" of the files. They'll usually be either August 8, 1997 or September 8, 1997.
Some language releases required further modification to these files, resulting in modified dates that may exceed both of these. If so, you can check the build version by right clicking LEGO1.DLL, choosing Properties, and selecting the Details tab.
The vast majority of the time, your version will read 1.1.0.0 meaning you have v1.1. If your version reads 1.0.0.0 and is NOT English, or reads something else like 1.2.0.0, please contact us with information about your copy.