RWallace

I agree a lot with what Sidrohan said above about design. I think that the reason G2 failed had nothing to do with the marketing or story or any of that. Yes, the G1 story was fantastic, the marketing was innovative, and the G2 story had some problems (in spite of some spectacular talent that was recruited), and the marketing was derivative. But. Given that it's a toy line, I think it was all about design. BIONICLE in 2001 debuted with the Toa and Turaga and then the Rahi. The promo CDs were obviously brilliant, as were the comics (we hadn't really seen anything like that before with LEGO), because it gave kids something to interact with, but it was the design that got kids to take a second look at the toys. In STAR WARS design philosophy, they talk about having a good silhouette when it comes to their characters. You can look at the silhouette of R2-D2 or Boba Fett, and you not only can differentiate them easily, but you immediately know who the character is, simply by their shape. Look at the masks that the line debuted for BIONICLE in 2001. Or the design of the characters. They pass the silhouette test perfectly. You didn't have to see the color of the mask or the finer details to recognize whose it was, a silhouette was enough to tell you immediately. The characters looked weird, unlike anything we had seen before, and some of them looked pretty menacing. It had that kind of morbid curiosity factor. Something alien, something scary, but something to get your imagination going, that you could lose yourself in. The G2 BIONICLE sets were quite big, and that was fun, but they looked a lot like action figures. Designs that could have come from anywhere. I think they were great in their own way, and some of the designs were outstanding. Ekimu's mask, for example, is an incredibly compelling piece. But there was nothing menacing, and nothing that screamed "this is something you haven't seen before." I think they would have done better had they gone with simpler characters who could be recognized and easily differentiated from each other as shadows in the rising sun. Designs that were simple and ominous. There was a lot of similarity between the characters in the design, I felt.

Thank you so much for your help! This has what I need.

WOAH! This is amazing--thank you so much for sharing this! It's amazing how dedicated this community has been to finding and sharing lost media. What an incredible fandom.

I’m wondering if anyone has the instruction manual for the GBA game LEGO BIONICLE that came out in 2001? I recently suffered another hard drive crash, and while I had most of the content backed up, I’m missing the Tales of the Tohunga/Quest for the Toa manual scans, and a few other rare scans for a project I’m hoping to complete this year. Thanks in advance!

Just dropping by to express how wonderful this project is progressing! I’m loving the care and scans that are going into this.

The Rahi Beasts PDF is actually the version hosted on Biomedia project, so I had no part in making it. Could you mention the pages that have this problem though? What device are you using to view the PDF? Most pages actually have a couple letters missing. The greatest amount of missing material, though, seems to be in the Rahaga's introduction to each Metru. I'm viewing the pdf on a Kindle Fire. I'm sorry to bother you, if I had paid better attention, I would have taken it up on the BMP forum. I've been looking at the PDF and I can't tell what you're talking about. My guess is that this is a "your end" problem.

Woo! Look forward to it. The scans will be SUPER helpful!

I literally just lost my copy to a basement flood a few days ago (the box was soaked and had to get thrown in the dumpster). My recollection is that the content was pretty similar to the kind of bios and information you’ll find in Mata Nui’s Guide to Bara Magna. (EDIT) Found some scans on another forum and sent you a PM with the link!

I cross-referenced a list of cards I have in a google doc after I couldn’t find #255 in my files. Cannot remember where the list was originally sourced, because I compiled it into my giant “list of BIONICLE story content” document, so it’s *possible* the information could be inaccurate (I certainly apologize if that is the case), but if you look at the gallery you linked to, it makes sense that it would be a Muaka story card. I wouldn’t know about any other cards, since I only kept the story cards portion of the list, but it looks like everything but 255 and 284 (I suppose that could be a story card too, but I don’t have it in my list) are available in that gallery until the scans get spotty starting with 285.

I just wanted to follow up and ask if anyone might be willing to create a new set of clean scans for the Legend of Mata Nui booklet and/or create a scan of story card #255. No worries either way, but I wanted to throw that question out to the community. Thanks!

The game was delayed several times. Usually, devs opt to scrap levels and problematic features when they’re in a rush to get the final product delivered. There’s lots of evidence of that happening here.

Thanks for the scans, TuragaNuva! Your contributions to the Bionicle community have been invaluable. Very interesting to look at. I’m still super perplexed as to why the brand new box I ordered didn’t come with this story booklet. Also, I’ll go back over my files tonight to look for those two mentioned in particular, but I would love, love, LOVE to see any missing cards, PlanetPerson! (EDIT) Is it card #255? That should be a Muaka story card and I don’t have a scan of it.

Looks more like the weird CGI they used in the card game artwork to me.

Could you take pics of this other booklet and share them? I would LOVE to see that. I would be happy to, but I don't have easy access to a scanner in my current situation. But if you can't wait, it's actually not that difficult to find the theme decks for sale online for pretty cheap. And they come with two Toa Mata masks . Would you believe my luck... I ordered one brand new off eBay, and it didn’t have a story booklet, just a rules one. It was cheap, but I wonder why. Just got here today. Is the actual text similar to text that can be found elsewhere, and just the artwork that’s sort of exclusive? [Edit] if anyone else has this and even just wanted to take pictures with a smartphone or something, I’d super appreciate it.

Could you take pics of this other booklet and share them? I would LOVE to see that.