emily

The originals are indeed lost, but a couple got preserved on a CD that they gave out at Toy R Us in 2001 as a prize for the Manas tournaments. Download the CD here.

 

Also, "vehicle set" as a designation didn't even exist until 2008. So even if you wanted to call V&F that it would be a retroactive decision, not based on how LEGO marketed the set.

...Well, Rasta In Pasta, Boxor and Exo-Toa. You will be meme'd.

Those are vehicles, yeah. But they weren't marketed as vehicles. It wasn't a theme like "Bohrok" or "Toa Hordika." It was two mech suits that were part of the same product lineup as Cahdok and Gahdok. "Battle Vehicles" became a thing in 2008 with the T series sets.

Also, "vehicle set" as a designation didn't even exist until 2008. So even if you wanted to call V&F that it would be a retroactive decision, not based on how LEGO marketed the set.

Another question what set does it come in?

Alack! You were but one click away from discovering this for yourself on the page the 1st Shadow provided!

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=98565&in=S

In Metru Nui, we all express our gratitude for the wise and benevolent Turaga Dume by continuing work as usual. A busy Matoran is a happy Matoran.

Turaga Dume sees all. 

I didn't get to play the game 'til Christmas, but I remember going to the store to pick it up on release day. I really loved the game when it first came out. Hard to believe it's been so long already.

The proper versions are up on the BioMedia Project now (scroll down a bit, they're all on that page)

Man, nice work! The only thing I know of that you've missed is a t-shirt/shorts pair that I got at TJ Max years and years ago. I'll try to remember to take some pictures the next time I'm home so you can add 'em.

Lovely stuff. Chutes were never given as much attention in the story as I would've liked, but you've built up a neat image of them with some really impressive visual design. 

Sadly I find it hard to believe that we would every lay out hand on it tough, as the movies weren't popular enough for a licenced re-release (even not through a streaming service).

They were all on Netflix for a while, but it seems like the contract ran up and they didn't renew it. I never checked to see if those releases were HD - anyone else remember?

It's just the author of the article writing that, its not like it's coming from the designers they interviewed. And they're just taking it for granted that Bionicle will return at some point. They're presumably an AFOL that generally isn't too interested in Bionicle - and from that standpoint, its a lot easier to make idle assumptions that are a little more consequential to die-hard fans.

Don't take it seriously. Whether or not Bionicle will return is obviously an open question, but this in particular isn't really evidence of anything one way or the other.

Back when I first registered I didn't know the first thing about how forums worked. I pasted the banner I wanted (remember banners?) at the bottom of my first post instead of setting it as my signature. How very silly!

I never saw one in real life, just those ones from the animations on the bios. Nice! 

Must've been a pretty last-minute change for them to ship with the actual display models.

That's definitely not in my copy of the magazine! It may be they got it confused with the Shop at  Home catalog that month - I don't remember anything from that either, but I don't have it on hand so I can't double-check.

On the other hand, it looks like it's Black Six that reported the news, so maybe he remembers, or even ordered the pack himself?

It's a 2002 offer, so I can't imagine it involving the then-discontinued Quest for the Masks trading card game, but I don't know what else it could be. The 2002 trading card games didn't exactly have any collect-ability to them - you just bought the theme decks and you had all the cards, simple as that. 

 

Huh, neat! There's so little we know about the Bionicle tours. It stinks they weren't better documented.

A lot of the early stuff wasn't properly documented. Like the 'Rainbow Trading Card' available in 2002 with purchase of some multipack, or the first comic mentioning going online to find out how Pohatu found his first mask.

Ooh, haven't heard about that trading card. Got any links to whatever info we have on it?

With the Pohatu thing, at least we know the url lines up with Pohatu's bio on the old site. So either the story was removed early on (before the versions of the page we can get with Wayback Machine) or it was never put up in the first place - considering there was no shortage of cancelled/delayed content on the Bionicle site over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if it was never there. But it could have been. 

Huh, neat! There's so little we know about the Bionicle tours. It stinks they weren't better documented.

Also, hey, sorry for the double-post, but while we're here talking about this game, does anyone remember how to get past the Vahki guarding the Archives? Just trying to shoot it isn't working and I can't remember if there was something else you need to do to distract it or something. It's been forever since I played through this game.

Really cool seeing that MeNOL prototype! I'm surprised they dropped that intro animation, it's pretty nice. 

I'd love to see an offline version so we could know the game won't be lost someday, but in the meantime it's a real testament to -Takua- and Tula that it's still online and accessible to this day.

But wait! You forgot! Makuta was the antidermis zamor spheres! Which means he actually appears in 14 Bionicle sets, an unprecedented number for any character. 

Turns out there really is a metaphorical lake of Makuta sets.

I'd love to have abstract designs in general come back - with distinct, non-humanoid shapes and forms that don't aspire to realism.

But that's not the way things seem to be going for constraction, for better or worse. With the current design philosophy, I think the hand-shaped hands make sense - and like people already said, the Y-joint is still around for use when a design calls for it.

Eh…

 

They haven't been referred to as "Matoran" anywhere before (except on that one foreign promotional page) and the poster is heavily stylized already.

 

I doubt it means anything big, but if it does then it's weird that it's never come up until now.

'Kulta' came out of nowhere in Lego Magazine too, and then the concept art came out with Kulta Kal and it turned out the name 'Kulta' was straight from the Bionicle team after all.

Two unrelated instances of "Matoran" doesn't prove anything completely, but I'd say it's pretty strongly indicative that they were using the term internally the whole time. They don't just fly by the seat of their pants when they make the magazine - they have reference material from the people who develop the featured themes.

Though since Kopaka is officially Storm Beast's counterpart, it would be sensible to assume this is some kind of mistake (but a weird one at that...)

I mean, the set comes with Kopaka's mask, but the Storm Beasts are made from the water Shadow Traps and shoot water and stuff so I'd say Gali is probably the correct foil.

Why did the put Kopaka's mask in the set? Who knows, but I'd guess he was more popular with kids.

I thought it was common knowledge, but I guess as time goes on there are less people around who remember these things. It's all there when you talk to the astrologer, its just less obvious I guess when you're looking at a modern version of the game where the telescope isn't running properly.

Like she says, the carvings are prophecies, they were supposed to depict all the chapters in the game. The brighter white stars were originally aligned so that the movement of the red star would synchronize with them in the same patterns as on the carvings as it slowly moved through the sky. When the red star was in exactly the right spot in relation to a constellation, a new chapter was supposed to come out. Now, obviously, the carvings don't all line up with actual events in the game - where they diverge we basically get a glimpse at how Templar had plotted the game out from the beginning, and how it changed. But iirc aside from the Bohrok constellation (which was added later, towards the end of the game's run) the number of carvings is equal to the number of chapters.

As you acknowledge, Templar was a small team and they couldn't guarantee that they would get every update out on-time. This is why the astrologer says the future is uncertain - its a disclaimer so that, if something went wrong, Templar would have some wiggle room to get the update out the door a bit later (as it happens, something did go wrong - Templar is based in New York city, so 9/11 had a big impact on them. They pushed the Ko-Koro chapter back just a bit as a result).

As for how I know this stuff, I've spent a lot of time reading through Bionicle news archives and old resources so I have at least a loose idea of what the fans were talking about back then, this included. It's a real shame none of the original fan forums survive, but what're you gonna do?

Upon further examination, after being pointed out by the original Reddit poster, it seems that every time the game is launched, it resets to a specific number. So unfortunately, this means that the end date is subjective to whenever the game is run and kept running, and likely nothing will happen. :/

Ah! A little disappointing, but good to know. At least we now know MNOG uses JOY script for those files, so it may be possible to figure out how to poke around them. So it wasn't all completely for nothing!

This is what I'm not sure about. All I know is what the numbers are giving me. My calculation today assumes the clock only processes hours, and doesn't add a number for days elapsed. So as of the time of my estimate, the clock has counted up from 2005; 100740 hours and 80 minutes.

What might help is if I knew where the game was getting the timer FROM. Everything I've found within II.4a.swf only points to the timer itself, and the placeholder data indicating that it is indeed a timer, with nothing actually giving me a solid number. Furthermore, when launched independently of the game, both numbers reset to zero, meaning it must be getting it from some other file called by that scene.

I can find a "StartTimer" and "StopTimer" in the Mata-Nui and Bionicle Mata Nui files (where I assume most of the underlying code for the game is), but I don't know what is going on around them because I can only get the files open in Notepad, where most of their content is rendered unreadable goop.