PC Engine Fan X! wrote:What's cool about custom built Lego sets is if you d/l the Lego Digital Designer program, and select from the available parts list, Lego will gather up all the parts + instruction manual, place everything inside a cool custom box & have it shipped out to you for a reasonable fee.
I love that program... so much fun to play with, especially as you have unlimited lego bricks to work with. I keep wanting to buy a custom set from them; but the stuff I build always seems to go above $100 before I really get anywhere with them. >_>
Never made anything near this cool, though... in that or IRL. Great job, curtydc!
In 1982, at my local mall there was a toy store by the name of "Toy World" that had an upcoming Lego building contest. I saw the promotional material for it and thought that it'd be cool to enter it. So on the big day of the event, I entered a sleek red colored space-based fightercraft with variable wings, plently of laser guns, a 360 degree free-spinning quad-mounted laser cannon and some heavy duty landing gear to compliment it. The basis for building it was my love for Star Wars and the cool space fightercraft featured in it was the starting point to "aim for". To my surprise, I was the only contestant until another boy showed up with his Lego creation...a castle (but there was no color coordination whatsoever -- IMO, it looked like shit to be honest). The toy sales associate told me to come back in 15 fifteen minutes as they would award the prizes for best Lego creation.
So the fifteen minutes came & went. Returned back to the toy store to see how I fared. Upon learning that I won 2nd place and was awarded $10.00 USD in credit applied to any Lego set (while the other kid got a $20.00 credit towards any Lego set). I had wanted to get the cool Lego Expert Builder Go-Cart set (with an engine that featured a piston that would move up & down if the go-cart was manually moved either in forward or reverse) but my dad said that it was too expensive (it was priced at $24.99). So I had to settle for two cheap-ass smaller Lego sets: The Exxon gas tanker set & a Lego City Dump Truck set with mini figure.
I thought that based on judging criteria, originality, overall use of Lego bricks, aestethics, etc. were to be taken into consideration (but it seems that all that "went out the window"). Oh well. This was during the era before Lego had even released more of it's popular Lego Spaceland themed sets, of course.
Eventually, the TW store ended up changing hands and eventually became a KB Toys store in the mid-1980s.
PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
Last edited by PC Engine Fan X! on Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
The Smithsonian wrote:The Art of Video Games exhibition (opening March 16, 2012) will explore how game designers combine visual effects with narrative, audio, and player interaction to create immersive and meaningful experiences.
To celebrate this ground-breaking exhibition, we are looking for photographs that show how video games can inspire creativity! These might include images of video-game-inspired drawings, paintings, sculptures, jewelry, clothing, events, graphics, food, wallpaper... anything, really! We're particularly interested in seeing creative and crazy costumes inspired by your favorite game characters.
We've created a Flickr group to collect all of these images, which we're hoping will continue to grow through the run of the exhibition and beyond. Please add your photographs to this group and help us spread the word!
Time for us to get submitting, OP included.
Why is it called the Vic Viper/Warp Rattler? Because the Options trail behind it in a serpent-like fashion, and the iconic front fins are designed to invoke the image of a snake's fangs.
PC Engine Fan X! wrote:This was during the era before Lego had even released more of it's popular Lego Spaceland themed sets, of course.
Nice story.
Definitely before my time, though... those space sets were AWESOME! Similarly, we had a short-lived toy chain out here called Childrens Palace. Most of my memories of that place consist of ogling those beautiful, massive $100+ Lego sets sitting high on the shelves, well out-of-reach of small hands. They also had a sweet demo setup of the Genesis when it first came out, too... one time we were there, some guy even taught me the level select cheat on Altered Beast!
Also, anyone interested in building/ordering custom kits from Lego should know the service is ending in January, although you can still (virtually) build to your heart's content with the software afterwards. I'm trying to build something worthy before the deadline; but it's going to be tough.
Thanks for the 411 on about the custom Lego set service ending in January 2012. I'll definitely submit my alternate colored mecha soldier unit to them and finally, get it finished (it has undergone a few minor revisions since it's inception back in 1985).
What's cool about being an "Lego Set Designer" employee working for Lego, is that you can call 'em up and they'll FedEx any speciality Lego piece(s) overnight (if it needed be when creating a brand new set from the ground up). Of course, this type of service isn't available to the general public though. For me, I have to just use with the available pieces at hand and sometimes have to improvise.
I can just imagine if George Lucas gave his blessing for Lego Star Wars sets back in the early 1980s...that would've been interesting to have seen implemented (rather than making their debut in 1999).
Upon buying the 2011 variant Lego SW Millennium Falcon set (with 1,254 seperate parts), it took a tedious 11 1/2 hours over a period of two days to construct. Quite cool nevertheless.
Protip: The thing about applying stickers on such Lego pieces is, you have to try to position them just right and apply them only once (otherwise, if peeled off and reapplied again, it will lose it's stickness). So it makes sense to apply them correctly the first time. Of course, using water-based modelling decals applied to Lego parts (for that one-of-a-kind & unique one-off creation) works just fine as well.
