10 Video Games That Were SAVED From Destruction
8. Lego Island
Before LEGO Star Wars dropped in 2005 and set the formula for the next two decades of LEGO video games (LEGO + Established IP + Winsome Humour = $$$), LEGO Island won its way into the hearts of many a nineties kid.
Showcasing the trials and tribulations of pizza boy Pepper Roni (if you survived the pun leading into the Goldeneye entry, you should be strong enough to withstand that name), Lego Island offered plenty of charming knockabout fun and remains an endearingly quirky example of early open world gaming.
However, the game's source code was thought lost to the ether for nearly 30 years as LEGO displayed a Konami-esque attitude to their early digital media. Not to be deterred, a group of LEGO Island superfans spent two years on a decompilation project for the game, forensically frankensteining a fascimile of the original code piece by painful peace.
As noted by Games Radar, the group's efforts did not go unnoticed by LEGO themselves. Inspired by the fans' resolve, the company asked their help in looking for LEGO Island materials across the internet...
...at which point LEGO realized they still had a copy the original source code, squirreled away and gathering digital dust in the company archives.
Sadly, the megacorp did what megacorps do and held on to the code for themselves, rather than sharing it with the fans whose efforts led to them rediscovering the source code in the first place. Pity LEGO didn't take any PR notes from Bethesda and Skyblivion...