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emily

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Everything posted by emily

  1. The Mask of Destiny news archives are preserved on the biomedia project servers; theyre not currently accessible but that will not be the case forever. Sorry i can't give you more right now!
  2. I have no memory of making such a change, but it's certainly likely that it was my fault, considering that the book type-ups came from me. Perhaps I was somehow bothered by the sword being in two pieces? I really have no idea at this point... Might've been edited since that's potentially one of Hapka's Nuva/original Toa confusion slipups that made it to print - the key art of the Nuva has Tahu with his magma swords combined into one big sword.
  3. even if scans aren't possible, i think people would appreciate photos!
  4. been working on a story update for biomedia and part of that is adding the books - i think ive sourced most of these from them same places you have, but i also seem to have found dark hunters somewhere. enjoy!
  5. If it was ever said by anyone that Lego took the words from some proto-Polynesian language, whoever said it was misinformed. It was Alastair Swinnerton who initiated the word-appropriating, and while he does say that Maori wasn't his 'first choice' (that was Rapa Nui, which as far as I can tell is no more proto than Maori), he says he used a Maori dictionary. That said, even the initial four words Swinnerton took to name the Toa (Tahu, Gali, Fonua, Lewa) come from a selection of languages - it seems that either the dictionary he had was woefully inaccurate, or from very early on the Bionicle team was comfortable taking from whatever culture they liked without much specificity beyond "Polynesia." Either way, all the languages used are modern and, quite the opposite from being early and archaic, many are in danger of dying out thanks to colonial practices violently suppressing Polynesian languages. Gamilaraay, the language Gali's name is taken from, is already deemed dead, with no fluent speakers left alive today.
  6. Ok so, poking around bricklink it looks like these two (ish ?) posters were probably included in some run of some Bionicle product or another (based on the smaller size and the Universal and Gameboy logos on some of them). I got a poster like the Tahu + Muaka one with my copy of Quest for the Toa, though mine had a different back.
  7. It wasn't a set pack-in in the US as far as I know, and it definitely wasn't a comic pack-in here either. My guess is it was given away in some promotion or another. There was a Toys R Us event where they gave out a poster and a copper Huna with any Bionicle purchase - I got a map of mata nui poster, but it's possible they had a selection. It could just as easily have been another promotion, though. @Cheesy is it possible you are thinking of the poster that came with Quest for the Toa? I didn't get a poster w/ any of my Rahi, but I did buy them used so it could be the poster just wasn't included.
  8. Are you sure it was? The name appears in MNOLG's last cutscene, and I think Greg said the character and him becoming a Toa was planned from the start. Takua is first named in Quest for the Toa, which came out on October 3rd. Maui Solomon contacted Lego sometime before June. The tricky part is that QftT does indeed use a few Maori, Fijian, and other cultures' words that hadn't cropped up in any media before. They might have been grandfathered in, since the game's development had already been rolling with them. But weirdly, we already see in the July version of the Legend of Mata Nui that they were actively scrubbing that game of appropriated words (only references to "villagers," Tamariki becomes Nobua). In any case, it's clear that from June onward, Lego was not taking new words from any cultures (again, MNOGII aside). So it's a question of at what point and by whom "Takua" was conceived - and by extension, whether he was one of the grandfathered-in words. Which we don't have a concrete answer for. BUT: while MNOG had its protagonist from January, Templar internally called him George for what seems to have been most of development. This also appears to have been the case with Quest for the Toa, which has a cheat code (evilgeorge) that makes the player character all dark blue. Based on that, I would argue the name "Takua" (if not his role as a character, which is a whole matter of its own) was almost certainly coined after the Maori intervention. In which case, it would have been an original word created at Lego, even though it accompanies some appropriated words in the game it debuts. And I also kind of think this just because we haven't found a convincing source for the name. But that could change!
  9. Takua's name was introduced post-Maori intervention, so it's super unlikely they were drawing from Maori or any other language for him. Templar's stuff in mnogII aside, Lego totally ceased with cribbing names from real-world cultures from mid 2001 onward. I'd assume they settled on Takua just because it sounded similar enough to the words they were using for other characters' names - same way "Bohrok" or "Matoran" presumably came about. Same goes for Podu, Nuparu, Hahli - and any words/characters 2002 onward outside of mnogii. There's a good Excel sheet that covers a lot of word origins for Bionicle - names for characters as well as locations, creatures, masks, etc. It was done by either Aanchir or Lyichir, or maybe both, I'm afraid I don't remember! Either way, here it is. It resolves a few questions in this thread: - Hafu (along with several of the original names) is from Rotuman, not Maori. Means "rock, stone, brick, iron, jewel" - Jala is Rotuman, "to burn, set fire to; to flare up" - Amaya is Japanese, "night rain" - Ally is Celtic, "stone" - Bour is "rock" in an unspecified African language Among a handful of other things. It's kind of ridiculous Templar was not only allowed by Lego to pull the same stunt Lego got in trouble for in 2001 again in 2003, but that Lego went ahead and used a couple of the names for the 04 Matoran (even if they were made legally distinct through adjustments to the spelling.) Of course I love Templar's work, but this really is not their best look.
  10. The white skin is preserved on Wayback! And here are the leadup paintover skins: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 I hadn't remembered any of this, but the 'something new is on the loose' countdown is definitely ringing bells for me!
  11. Ah, here's the minisite! I don't know what the standard point of access was supposed to be, but I got to it from a random link in the middle of the Exo-Toa bio, lol. I haven't been able to find a working version of Exo or Bohrok but I haven't looked exhaustively.
  12. Having trouble digging up any sources for reference, but I believe these three things (the bohrok thing, the exo toa thing, and the Mata Nui explorer) were accessible through the use of the codes printed on the three mini-comics in the Bohrok Awake trading card packs from McDonald's. Maybe later on they opened them up to make them accessible to anyone visiting the Bionicle site. I never saw any of the three myself back in the day, but the broken games download on BMP has non-functional versions of the two missing ones. Better than nothing I guess.
  13. The intro was handled by a different studio than TT, and for whatever reason only TT ever used their own models, everyone else working on the game seems to have made their own. For the intro, models are mostly set-accurate with the addition of hands, while all the promo renders by Advance have got their own subtle stylization going on (this vs this, this vs this)
  14. I can point you to this one at least. I had no idea there even was a press conference video at the end of the campaign - I wonder if it's something that flew under most people's radars, might explain the lack of reference to it anywhere. We've got two versions of the Free the Band site on BMP, but neither have the vid unfortunately.
  15. Just did a 5x check, the other two villagers in the scene switched masks, Podu always had a Huna. It'd be good if someone else could try it out to verify, but its looking like he's one of the ones with a consistent mask. Neat!
  16. That's a slightly separate thing - they just never made a 'back angle' sprite for the Hau, so any Hau-wearing villagers use the Akaku sprite for that angle. Once you've seen it there's no unseeing it, lol
  17. That might be - though with some characters there seems to be a greater chance they'll have one mask over others. Like Jala on the beach *usually* still has a Hau for me. Could be the case for Podu but he's harder to check since he's in the middle of a level. oh true! I wasn't even mentally counting the wizards since they have a unique sprite that doesn't do the random mask generation.
  18. Most NPCs in the game have randomized masks, including Jala when you meet him at the start. The main exceptions to this rule ive been able to spot are Onepu, and Jala when he appears in Ta Koro.
  19. T1 and T2 were given out at QFTM tournaments at Lego stores in 01 - T1 for participating, T2 for winning. There weren't many of those tournaments, so the cards are super duper rare. This old BZP reference page has some decent scans of them. As for the rest of your post - PM sent!
  20. Oh nice! Thanks for the tip, OP is now updated with the contents of the packs.
  21. The BMP has been updated! It's not my doing, but it seems like someone on our staff grabbed the files from the version of the game on Templar's site - that's now our "No Login" streaming version. Here's the ZIP I found if you wanted to download it. I think it's identical to the 2006 rerelease, aside from the modifications LEGO made to introduce the word "Matoran". Weirdly, the same dialogue files for the Chronicler's Company seem to be absent there as well? Not sure exactly what's going on there. I ended up just creating new files from scratch using the text displayed in-game to get our versions fixed up. They might have 'em, but we definitely don't.
  22. These packs were distributed at a Toys R Us event in late 01/early 02 and included the exclusive P1, P2, and P3 Gahlok cards (the 'P' stands for preview I think!). There aren't many Bionicle trading cards rarer than these! Each of the 8 packs I've got contains one randomly packed Preview card, plus a first edition ultra-common card from the theme decks, and an ad card. The packs are sealed! Here's what I've got: x1 P1 - traded x2 P2 x3 P3 I am mostly interested in trading - here's a list of cards I'm looking to trade for (first edition preferred): If you haven't got any of those cards on-hand, I'd also be interested in trading for Kanohi, Slizer discs, and miscellaneous promo material/paraphernalia from 2001-2003. Let me know!
  23. This was an issue with the 2006 rerelease that propagated when that version served as a basis for all the fan-produced restorations/modifications. The 2002 version Templar posted on their site in 2013 has the files, though! Now that I'm on BMP staff it actually should be pretty simple for me to update our versions of the game with these files. I'll get on that sometime soon.
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