19th Anniversary Special, pt. 2

Welcome back to the Lego BIONICLE (GBA) 19th anniversary celebration! Presenting: the islanders of Mata Nui!

 If you're wondering why I call them islanders: it's what the game calls them.

There are a few interesting points here. First off, I mentioned last time that most of the islander sprites are renders of the final model, with its thick arms and updated feet. However, the talking animations for all 6 mask designs use the old model. The wizard (or "vuata maca tree keeper," as BS01 calls them) uses the old model exclusively, and the guard uses the new model exclusively.

Top row: idle. Bottom row: talking.

 The Hau sprite set inexplicably uses renders of the Akaku wearer for its northwest walk animation.

Next, let's take a closer look at those colors. Here's how they're ordered in the game's memory:

Unused colors are highlighted in yellow.

There are 9 islander color palettes for each of the 6 wahis and the tutorial, for a total of 63. For whatever reason (likely the limit of 16 unique palettes at a time), 8 of them were never used! Here's what they look like on the Kakama sprites:

I love the blue and orange Onu-Koronan. It's the sort of thing you'd never see after 2001.

A misconception I've seen is that islander colors in this game are randomized. They're not, but masks are. Almost every islander in the game uses one of the six masks at random and thus doesn't have a set appearance. However, there are four exceptions (not including the guards and wizards). In order of appearance:

"I'm sore all over." – Podu, 19 years ago

There is only one other named islander, Taipu. He looks nothing like he does in any other media.

You ever think about how, based on a few vague statements by Greg, this game is considered to be fully canon while the Mata Nui online game is only semi-canon? What I'm saying is, there's an argument to be made that this is canonically how Taipu looked during the events of the 2001 story.

Anyway, between this spritesheet and the one from yesterday, there is now nothing stopping you from making a Lego BIONICLE (GBA) sprite comic. Use this power responsibly. Happy birthday, video game!

19th Anniversary Special, pt. 1

Today, October 1, 2020, is the 19th anniversary of Lego BIONICLE (GBA)'s American release! Well, supposedly. Some sources claim it came out on October 2nd. And the first known ROM dump is from September 29th. But in any case, I'm celebrating with two new posts, one today and one tomorrow. So without further ado, I present a spritesheet so large blogspot can't handle it: Takua.

Click for full size.

Frequent readers of the IMDb Trivia section might already know that Takua's sprites are renders of an older 3D model than the rest of the islanders (with some exceptions). The model in question is based on an as-yet-unseen McToran prototype, and has been found in the files of The Legend of Mata Nui. This same model was likely used as the basis for the vector graphics in Templar Studios' Mata Nui online game. Takua's cameo (as George) in Lego Backlot, also developed by Templar, uses the same model:

Backlot.

This prototype model has thinner arms than the final, and the two "toes" are not connected at the heel.

The Legend of Mata Nui.

Beyond that, I don't have much to say about the sheet itself. The most notable oddity is that Takua's dismount animation when he's facing north is 6 frames longer. Perhaps the rest of his dismounts used to be longer and were cut down to save space. Similarly, Takua has only one animation for using the firestaff, in which he faces southeast. The Power Pack demo footage shows him using it while facing north and west.

That's it for today... check back tomorrow for part 2!

EDIT: The Legend of Mata Nui model was extracted using LOMNTool, written by Ben Garcia of Litestone Studios. Big shoutouts to him and the rest of the team for their work.