That Matoran with a Vahi

Oh wow, this is cool. I knew the bit about the originally-intended ages for the Toa, but most of this is new to me... and makes for a really cool read. If I ever continue work on the Bionicle AU fanfic I have up my sleeve, I'm definitely incorporating some of this stuff I think what I like most out of all this is the original characterisation of Makuta. Kind of a shame they did away with that eventually, but... it is what it is. And it's absolutely fascinating to see this alternate take on what he 'might' have been. Thanks ever so much for sharing it!

Takanuva Vs Makuta is really neat, in my opinion. The others are cool too; but for me, just... that one. I love the way it's such a unique new take on the familiar characters, I love the way they look like they're wearing detailed costumes rather than just typical Bionicle armour; and, too, that they thematically work so well together. Love the interesting combination of pieces and techniques in both their builds. They got my vote, for sure ^^

That looks really useful; I'll go ahead and do that. Thanks!

Would anyone be able to help me get some old Lego PC games running on Windows 10? I'm thinking mainly Football Mania (or Soccer Mania, depending on your part of the world), though I suspect some of the other games may have this issue when I try them too. I just had a desire to play it again a couple of days ago, mainly for the old nostalgia (because, in spite of not being a sporty person at all, I loved that game when I was a kid); but while it installed insanely quickly on my Windows 10 gaming-quality laptop, it just... doesn't run at all beyond that. The launch screen comes up, I click 'play game', and... Well, first it told me I needed to log in with administrator permissions to go any further. So I did 'run as administrator' from my computer, and just... nothing happened. Launch screen came up, I clicked play, the launch screen closed - and that was it. Did nothing further at all. I tried running it in various compatibility modes too; all with the same result. Does anyone know if there's a solution to get it working? For added reference, the game played okay some years ago on my previous Windows 7 desktop PC (albeit with a glitch in the save feature); but it just doesn't do anything at all on this computer. I know it might be a lost cause, it may just have to join the pile of numerous other old PC game disks I have that just got too old for increasingly modern machines... but I'd appreciate any help, all the same. Thanks! ^^

I've been wondering, ever since Lego picked up the Toy Story license back in '08, whether we were going to see a Lego game based on a Disney (or Disney/Pixar) animation product. As a big Disney fan, this development pleases me, and I definitely intend to pick this game up once it becomes available ^^

I remember that, back in 03/04, the Official Bionicle Website had a few links to prominent fansites on one of its pages. It's not something I'd ever seen on any Lego website, before or since, so some years back I was convinced that I'd imagined it altogether, until someone else on BZP mentioned seeing those same links. In any case, I was curious and wanting more of a fix for my Bionicle obsession, so I clicked one of the links and began poking around. At first, I think, I wasn't certain; but then I saw a couple of threads on the hot topics list on the front page that caught my interest; and, after seeking my parents' opinion first (I was only twelve at the time, and new to actually interacting with people on the internet), I joined right up. Of those threads, the one that I remember most standing out to me was the review topic for Galigee's old Makuta Island epic, which I spent many enjoyable hours reading before I began venturing into the rest of the forums. Where, you know, I was generally your typical annoying newbie before I started to learn the ropes xD;;

HEWKII x MACKU ARE OTP FOREVER. I... can't say I've ever considered much Lego shipping outside of Bionicle, though. Given that many Lego themes of my childhood had an absence of good gender balance, though, I guess there was nothing really to prompt me to even consider such an angle when I was younger. And, not having been keeping up with the new themes in recent years, I can't say that I have many ideas-- Though, upon revisiting and reconsidering a couple of old lines a few years back, I did start low-key shipping the pairs of Cam x Flex, and Radia x Crunch from 2001's Alpha Team, so... there is that.

With regards to the treespeak thing; I'm pretty sure I remember that, when it was first introduced in MNOG, treespeak words had no hyphens; it was only around-about 2003-04 that started becoming a thing. I would tentatively guess than all such words coined in the early years were forever spelled without hyphens, while any new ones that Greg invented from the Metru Nui era onwards were given hyphens for ease of understanding? Though this is only a guess based on half-remembered facts, as it's been ages since I seriously looked at any of the source material.

Right; thanks ever so much, both of you! I'll give that another try when I have the time! ^^

Just tried that one too; no better success, I'm afraid. My computer seems convinced that the patch file "contains a virus or malware" and is giving me trouble with downloading it from there. Do you know if that's just the nature of the patch's filetype, or is there really something potentially harmful in it? I know AVG can be rather... overzealous sometimes; but without knowing enough about the reason for the warning, I'm reluctant to bypass it in case there really is a risk ^^;

Ooh, I love your use of lighting! It lends those pictures a really cool effect ^^

Time Trap, for sure. It was one of the last Bionicle novels I was able to get ahold of, and I'd seen many people around BZPower making a big deal of that one in particular. I was convinced it couldn't be that good - then I was finally able to get hold of it, and found out that it indeed WAS that good xD I think part of the reason for it is the fact that it was unfettered by the need to sell toys as much as its predecessors and successors were; as the final novel of its arc, all of the promoting of that wave had already been done for the year, so there wasn't the typical need to include such a mass amount of characters - and the story benefited from the narrower focus. Too, I'll always have a soft spot for Tales of the Masks. It was the first Greg novel I read; and to me, it always left Hapaka's books in the dust. The characterisation felt crisper and better-defined to me (more so than a lot of the later Greg novels, too, for that matter), and the individual almost self-contained stories within it really lent themselves to his storytelling style - they always were a joy for me to read. Honourable mentions, I think, are Legacy of Evil and Inferno which, in spite of some weaknesses here and there, felt like the strongest complete books of the Legends series to me.

Okay, tried downloading that... my antivirus program reckons that the patch is "infected with FileRepMalware" and moved the file to quarantine as soon as I tried to open it :/ Thanks anyway, though ^^

Has anyone worked out the compatibility settings needed for this to run on Windows 10 yet? I'm amazed this has turned up, and very curious to give it a go - but I'm not getting anything beyond white screen with a loading cursor for a few moments, then flashes of black, white, black, and a quit back to the desktop. I only just saw this topic a couple of days ago, and so haven't been keeping up with all the ongoing processes of getting it to work; so I may be missing a solution that's already been discovered by now xD;;

Huh. Was she in the Toy Fair photos? I didn't notice her - but then, I did skip over a few of them, too. Still, as a proud Hufflepuff, this pleases me; and Susan is one of my favourite minor characters, too. Cool to know that she's going to be represented in minifigure form. Thanks for telling me

Oooh! To the great surprise of no-one who knows me, the minifigures are the first thing to catch my eye. I am LOVING the redesigns; Hermione looks adorable with her new hairpiece, and is certainly the most Emma-Watson-looking minifigure to date. Harry and Ron's new hairpieces are vast improvements over their 2001 versions, and Hagrid and Dumbledore's hair parts, too, look superb - although if this set is meant to represent Philosopher's Stone, it's a little surprising to see a Gambon-based Dumbledore design, as opposed to a Richard Harris one. I suppose that's just so they can use the same minifigure of him across the whole line, though. Quirrel, too, has been long overdue for a redesign and looks much more impressive than his original self. And yet? I feel a tiny bit disappointed by them, too? There are so many characters in the Harry Potter franchise who haven't been touched in plastic form at all, and while I understand that the familiar characters are undoubtedly the most popular... it's a missed opportunity that this set doesn't include a single Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw student, who have so far been absent in every Lego Harry Potter set apart from the one in the Games line, when the great hall would have been an ideal place to include a representative from each house. I'd like to hope that the other sets in the line will remedy that, but I still feel like this would have been the best set to show off some students who weren't Gryffs or Slyths. In any case, though, I'll continue to watch for further news of this line with much interest ^^

TQ2 was what started my interest in exploring fan created games in the first place, it's massively nostalgic for me. I think I'll just have to make do with my memories, though, as I seem to remember the creator saying way back in the Toa Quest 3 thread that the TQ2 game files no longer worked at all. Oh, I remember that version of TQ3 too - kinda, at least. I played it back when it was just a demo that only had Lhikan's level, I never knew it had been expanded beyond that. That's pretty cool! I never remember having those problems with the newer TQ3 though. I recall a glitch where if Lewa fell to his death he just didn't respawn at all (the Turaga Vakama level in TQ2 had a similar issue as well), but otherwise I remember playing it through, a number of times, without issue. Maybe that depended on the computer that it was being run on, though. Whereas now, if I try to open the games on my new laptop, I just get a black screen which plays the menu music but does nothing else. A little bit frustrating xD;

I dunno how to share them, but I have a couple of games that I downloaded to play still saved away. I've got all the necessary files for a couple of 2D RPGs - "Flow of the River" by Swingin Kanohi Studios, and something called "Legend of Mata Zuto: Fall of the Conqueror" by Cyan Productions - which still run okay even on my new laptop. The latter may not be as old as you're thinking of, since its thread from 2011 still exists in the depths of the Fan Created Media forum (though the download links there are broken). I've also got the game files for the platform game "Toa Quest 3" - I don't remember who it was made by - though they no longer play properly so I'm not quite sure what to do with them. Speaking of, does anyone know where I might be able to find the latter's predecessor, "Toa Quest 2"? I remember that it had a number of bugs; but it had unique levels for almost every hero character from 2001-03, and then some, and I'd love to get all nostalgic by playing it again xD

To be fair, I think that if BZP is going down (and I reserve judgement on that fact), then it's got less to do with the absence of Bionicle than it has the simple fact that forum sites themselves are massively out of fashion these days. There's just not that appeal anymore - and I think that even if Bionicle were to regain its former level of popularity, any forum site would have trouble attaining a higher level of activity now. People looking to talk about any subject no longer gravitate towards forums, generally. ...in fact, BZP is quite literally the only forum site I've been on in recent years that's still doing even this well anymore xD

Oh yeah, that was the UK version, I've got it too; though I somewhat defaced mine as a kid, so it's not ideal for scanning anymore. I haven't seen it mentioned on BZ before, so I assumed it had just slipped through the cracks and been forgotten about - but now that it's been brought up, permit me to share what I remember? It was mostly comprised of American comic #3, but had four pages from #2 - the Turaga telling the legend, Gali climbing the mountain, and Lewa getting knocked down by the Nui-Rama - tacked on the beginning. There was some additional narration from Makuta that covered those parts, where in the American version his narration only started at the beginning of #3 - and, perhaps most curiously, his dialogue was 'unfiltered' in the UK version, By that I mean, where in the American one he said the Toa would "be defeated", or would "fall", in the UK version that dialogue instead was "be destroyed" and "perish". Too, the bit where Makuta sends the sand against Tahu in the battle, through to Onua catching him, was cut - presumably to make room for the additional pages at the beginning. I agree about the early distribution being weird; in my experience, though, that didn't stop in 2002. Maybe it wasn't the same for everyone, but where I was, we got the first comic of the Bohrok arc as per normal; then we didn't receive any more full comics until 2003. What we got, instead, was a few pages of the 2002 comics printed in each issue of Lego Magazine - sometimes with speech bubbles switched around too - meaning we got the bare bones of the story and no more. It was only in 2003 that we started getting separate Bionicle comics again, beginning with a combined issue of comics 10 and 11.

I'm definitely interested in this! I love how it has a video-game feel to it, but also has a lot of room to expand beyond that as well, and I really enjoy what you've done with the setting so far. (for the record, I'm new to BZP roleplay - though not to online rp in general - so while I've read up as much as I can, I may need correcting on some of the finer points as I start getting involved xD;; ) A couple of questions about characters, if I may? - Would it be possible for a matoran to be an independent hunter, not be part of the guild? Or do all hunters have to have gone through the guild first? - Are the elements gender-locked, as in Bionicle canon? Or are gender and element independent of each other? In addition, I'm curious; how will the Rahi be played? Will they be NPCs, or controlled by specific members of the game? Thanks in advance! ^^

At the height of my investment in the fandom, I owned the vast majority of sets from 2001-2008. Not all; I never had more than one Mctoran, I skipped most of the playsets, and never got around to finishing my '08 collection because my interests started shifting away from Bionicle towards the end of that year. Still, it was a substantial collection. By the end of Bionicle Generation 1, my collection stood at: 2001: All Toa Mata, Turaga, and Rahi; plus Mctoran Kongu 2002: All Bohrok and Toa Nuva. The Boxor, the Bahrag, and five Bohrok Va (missing Tahnok Va) 2003: All Bohrok-Kal, Matoran, Rahkshi, and titans 2004: All Toa Metru, Metruan, Vahki (plus a duplicate Bordakh) and titans 2005: All Visorak, Rahaga, Toa Hordika, and titans. Also Toa Norik and Iruini, and The Battle of Metru Nui and Visorak Battle Ram playsets 2006: All Piraka, Voyatoran, Toa Inika and titans; plus Race for the Mask of Life playset 2007: All Barraki, Mahritoran and Hydruka, Toa Mahri, and titans 2008: All Phantoka and titans. Vuktraz and Mazeka, Tanma and Gavla, Rockoh T3, and five of the Mistika (missing Krika) 2009: Fero & Skirmix, Attakus, Click, and Kiina 2010: Tahu Star But since then... After G1's end, it eventually got to the point where my collection was simply taking up space for no good reason. Rather than continuing to hoard such a large number of sets, I sold most of them on ebay, only hanging onto a handful who had specific nostalgia value for me, and a couple of others that I picked up more recently. At the current point in time, then, my collection instead looks more like this: 2001: All Toa Mata, Turaga Vakama and Nokama, Muaka & Kane-Ra, and Mctoran Kongu 2002: The Exo-Toa 2003: Panrahk and Lerahk, Hahli, Macku, Hewkii, Takua & Pewku, Jaller & Gukko, and Takanuva 2005: a single Nokama minifigure 2009: Glatorain Mata Nui

Ah right, that's fair ^^ I'm certainly still interested in being a part of it, and I look forward to seeing how the concept will develop.

Count me interested in the Rahi Hunters one; it sounds like my kind of scene. A couple of questions. Would canon matoran characters be allowed to be used, or would it be strictly original characters? Also, what would be the setting? One of the islands we know of from canon - the environment description could easily fit Voya Nui, at least, or maybe even parts of Mata Nui - or a new location entirely? With so much of the Bionicle universe that canon failed to show us, there's a lot of room to play it either way. In any case, I'd for sure be up for taking part in it, if it does go ahead ^^

Whereas, I am weird and different... I never seriously sat down to play MNOG until maybe 2003, main reason being that, back when it first came out, I couldn't figure out how to get off the beach so I assumed there wasn't anything more to the game than that. Because of that, I saw the CGI renderings of the matoran on their bio pages long before I ever met them in the game; so, that's how they've always stuck in my mind. When I think Taipu, I always think black Pakari; and by the same token, black Ruru always says 'Hafu' to me. ...also, to be fair, Hafu's mask in the MNOG always did look more like a stretched Ruru than an actual Pakari, what with the slitted eyes, the shape of the forehead hole and other facial patterning. I just can't imagine Hafu with the wide-eyed 'expression' that the canon Pakari has; the narrowed eyeholes suit him a lot better in my mind ^^