- "So, as a tribute to Dino Attack RPG and all the memories it will leave us with, I decided to create this Flash animation, the greatest one I've ever created to this day, as a retrospective on some of these memories, from the betrayal of Kotua to the battle for Adventurers' Island. Thanks guys."
- — VezonWireless
Dino Attack: Legacy is a Flash animation tribute to Dino Attack RPG.
Plot Summary[]
Dino Attack: Legacy follows a similar plot to Dino Attack RPG. However, as the Flash animation is only three minutes long, much of the story has been condensed to a simpler structure and liberties have been taken involving the appearances of characters. Sections in italics are exclusive to the remastered version.
On a sunny day in LEGO City, a pair of civilians meet up with one another. Their attention is drawn to the dark shadows of Mutant Pterosaurs as the sky turns dark and cloudy. The two Minifigs run away as a swarm of Mutant Lizards and a Mutant Raptor attack the street.
From the outskirts of the city, Dr. Rex watches the Dino Attack in triumph. By the powers of the Darkitect, Dr. Rex is transformed into a Mutant T-Rex armored in Silge Metal. However, Specs, Shadow, Digger, and Viper form the Dino Attack Team and fight back. The Dino Attack Team engages Dr. Rex and his Mutant Dino army in epic battle.
In the ruins of LEGO City, Rex sees Kotua approaching Trouble. Since Kotua believes that the best way to defeat the Mutant Dinos is to exterminate them, Rex intervenes and stops Kotua from bringing harm to the tamed Mutant Lizard. Kotua responds by using the seven Chaos Emeralds to unleash Chaos. To their surprise, Chaos is quickly frozen by an Ice Orb dropped from Villains Headquarters.
Inside Villains Headquarters, Evil Ogel, Sam Sinister, the Brickster, and Vladek work together to fly the giant airship. They are joined by four FUTURE villains: Fogel, Finister, the Frickster, and Fladek. However, Villains Headquarters loses power and crash-lands in LEGO City.
Rex and Kotua approach the wreckage, and Databoard knocks some sense back into Kotua. The three Dino Attack agents decide to recruit Evil Ogel, Sam Sinister, the Brickster, and Vladek in the fight against the Mutant Dinos, since the villains are just as eager to see the Mutant Dinos defeated. Databoard and Kotua go to Alpha Team Headquarters to recruit Frozeen, Chompy, Magma, and Voltage, while Rex goes to Dino Attack Headquarters to recruit Agent X, Zero, Nick Lightning, Zenna, B, David Norman, Hertz, and Amanda Claw. They board an Iron Predator and leave LEGO City.
On Pirates Forbidden Island, Greybeard, Coral, and Elizabeth Winsor cut their way through the jungle. They are attacked by a Mutant T-Rex, but Greybeard leads the Pirates into battle. The Iron Predator arrives after the Mutant T-Rex is slain, and Rex and his teammates are impressed by the Pirates' fighting capabilities, so they recruit the Pirates.
In the Goo Caverns, Semick and Sam Throramebi meet each other in a Thunder Driller and Chrome Crusher, respectively. Despite the rivalry between Power Miners and Rock Raiders, they put their differences behind them when they see a swarm of Mutant Lizards and a Mutant T-Rex coming towards them. The Thunder Driller and Chrome Crusher, soon joined by the Iron Predator, push their way through the Mutant Lizards and defeat the Mutant T-Rex.
On LEGO Island, the Infomaniac attempts to defend himself by throwing green bricks and red bricks at Mutant Lizards. Luckily, Zachary Virchaus and Andrew arrive to defend the Infomaniac. The Iron Predator, Thunder Driller, and Chrome Crusher also arrive on LEGO Island.
Inside a XERRD laboratory, Wallace Bishop studies a Minifig/Mutant Lizard Hybrid, Michelle Glados inspects a Teleport Pad, and Walter Breen views data on a monitor. Led by Reptile and Hotwire, a team of Dino Attack agents consisting of Andrew, Zachary Virchaus, Semick, and Rex attack the XERRD laboratory, destroying XERRD's equipment and causing Dr. Breen to flee. Ata observes Dino Attack's progress during this battle against XERRD.
Dr. Inferno attacks the city with his giant robot mech. Rex, Fullmetal, and Dr. Cyborg send Trouble, Tex, and Cyrista's Bane into battle to defeat the mech. Dr. Inferno is arrested by Osprey while Ogel mocks his defeat.
In the Wild West, the Second Headquarters Squad, consisting of Heavy, Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Demoman, Sniper, Scout, Spy, and Pyro, fights past an army of Minifig/Mutant Lizard Hybrids. They send a bomb cart on a mine track to Fort Legoredo, where the explosive detonates and kills all the Hybrids inside.
On Adventurers' Island, Chompy joins the Alpha Female T-Rex and her brethren as they face off against Mutant Dinos and a Hybrid Rider outside the Temple of Hotep III. In the Maelstrom Temple, Rotor leads Dust, Kat, and Dr. Cyborg into battle against Stromlings lead by the now-corrupted Zachary Virchaus. The Iron Predator arrives at the temple, and Andrew is able to defeat Zachary, allowing the Stromling Agent to be cured with the help of Minerva Fabello. However, despite the loss at the Maelstrom Temple, the Darkitect is not yet defeated.
The Iron Predator returns to LEGO City. Rex leads Trouble, Kotua, Databoard, Evil Ogel, the Brickster, Sam Sinister, Vladek, Magma, Frozeen, Chompy, Hertz, Amanda Claw, Greybeard, Coral, Semick, Sam Throramebi, Reptile, Hotwire, Zachary Virchaus, Andrew, Fullmetal, Tex, Kat, Dust, Rotor, Dr. Cyborg, Cyrista's Bane, Minerva Fabello, the Second Headquarters Squad, Kai, Hyrode, Voltage, Agent X, Nick Lightning, Zero, Zenna, David Norman, Elizabeth Winsor, Trigger, Aravis, B, Osprey, Frank Einstein, Roger Remous, Talia Kaahs, General, Adventure, and Pterisa into battle against the Mutant Dinos. As the two armies converge, the screen fades to black, and the title "Dino Attack: At War's End" appears onscreen.
In the stinger, Dr. Rex roars during a thunderstorm.
Behind the Scenes[]
Dino Attack: Legacy was created by PeabodySam, who began work on the project on April 17, 2010 under the working title "Project: LEGACY". He used Adobe Flash to draw and animate the characters and scenes. PeabodySam largely used LEGO Digital Designer as a reference when drawing Minifigs, while referring to images on Brickset as well as his own Minifigure collection for facial features and torso decorations. Throughout development, PeabodySam uploaded updated animation sequences to his YouTube channel, VezonWireless.
PeabodySam originally envisioned the project as more of a trailer for Dino Attack RPG and less of a summary. As such, chronological order was often not taken into account during early development, and the scene on Pirates Forbidden Island was placed before the Villains Headquarters scene.
One early concept for Dino Attack: Legacy was that the deaths of major characters in Dino Attack RPG would appear as a quick montage near the end of the video. Although only the deaths of PBB and Aster Oid were animated, PeabodySam intended to also show Loop killing Kat. When this idea was dropped, the death scenes of PBB and Aster Oid remained in Dino Attack: Legacy for most of its development but were eventually reworked into the scenes depicting the crash site of Villains Headquarters and the Dino Attack Team's attack on a generic XERRD laboratory. The Brickspider Bot v1.0 was intended to appear in both scenes, but when they were cut, the Brickspider Bot never appeared in the final product.
An early concept featured General walking slowly through the Dino Island Laboratory, discovering the stasis tube of Talia Kaahs, and breaking it open to free her. While this scene was ultimately never animated, General and Talia Kaahs were given cameos in the remastered version's finale.
During the Villains Headquarters scene, the FUTURE villains were intended to have their own scene where they each made menacing poses in front of a swirling red-and-black Hypno Disk. Since PeabodySam could not get the intended effect from this scene, it was quickly cut after a short-lived attempt at animating it.
Before PBB's death was cut from Dino Attack: Legacy, PeabodySam considered animating a scene in which Libo reveals his true form to avenge PBB's death, as he does in the original RPG. As Libo's animation could not be finished in time and PBB's death scene was cut, this idea was dropped.
Originally, there were plans to include a scene of the GAIA Squad fighting Mutant Dinos and Hybrids at Mount Bricklake. However, this scene was never animated, and only Tex makes a cameo appearance on a movie poster hanging in the cinema theater. In the remastered version, this concept was reworked into Fullmetal sending Tex into battle against Dr. Inferno, while Aravis makes a cameo during the finale.
At one point, PeabodySam considered ending Dino Attack: Legacy with a series of clips inspired by the Left 4 Dead "The Sacrifice" trailer. Using numerous assets from Dino Attack: Legacy, this concept was eventually expanded into its own separate trailer for the final battle of At War's End. Recursively, several backgrounds from the At War's End trailer were reused in Dino Attack: Legacy.
Until late in development, Dino Attack: Legacy was simply a montage of various scenes from Dino Attack RPG. When the Team Fortress 2 trailer for "Mann Versus Machine" was released in August 2012, PeabodySam was inspired to construct an overarching story around Dino Attack: Legacy wherein Rex traveled from scene to scene recruiting fighters for the Dino Attack cause, much like the RED Heavy in the "Mann Versus Machine" trailer.
Dr. Cyborg was one of the last characters added to Dino Attack: Legacy. Consequently, his torso and leg printing were heavily simplified in the interest of time. Furthermore, he keeps his opaque black visor down at all times in order to mask his asymmetrical face, in order to avoid needing to draw two separate faces for him facing the left and right directions. In the remastered version, his torso and leg printing were updated to have the correct level of detail.
In the years after Dino Attack: Legacy's release, PeabodySam started work on a remastered version. This was born out of his frustration with the original version's framerate, which was made inconsistent in the YouTube video, as well as the fact that certain character designs continued to be updated and altered. The remastered version was first hinted upon in the 2017 release of Dino Attack: Legacy and Knuckles, which featured updated designs for Dr. Rex, Trouble, Finister, and Frickster; PeabodySam specifically pointed these out in the video description and suggested that this entailed something in the future for Dino Attack: Legacy.
In December 2022, PeabodySam officially announced that the remastered version of Dino Attack: Legacy would be released on December 21 to commemorate ten years of the animation being on YouTube, as well as the tenth anniversary of Dino Attack: At War's End's conclusion. This remastered version features higher resolution footage, a consistent framerate of 24 fps, improved visual details, and a few additional scenes and characters that were not in the original animation.
Pterisa was the final character to be added to the remastered version. PeabodySam considered using her alternate non-canonical design after being pleased with how it looked, but decided to simply use Andrewnuva199's illustration instead after asking for other players' opinions. Unfortunately, the time spent on creating Pterisa meant there was no time left to animate her joining Kat, Dust, Rotor, and Dr. Cyborg in the Maelstrom Temple battle, relegating her to just a cameo in the finale.
When PeabodySam decided to include sound effects and voice clips in the remastered version, he recorded some voice clips for Greybeard and Dr. Inferno, and also planned to voice Sam Throramebi. Greybeard and Sam were quickly given voice clips from LEGO Racers instead, but PeabodySam's temporary voice for Dr. Inferno remained until fairly late in development, when he realized that Dr. Inferno had an easily-isolated laugh in The Robot Chronicles.
A few music tracks were changed between the original and remastered versions of Dino Attack: Legacy in order to better suit the mood of various scenes (such as replacing "Darkling Battle" with "Marauding Masses" during the villains' alliance) or to create a more stylistically-consistent soundtrack (such as replacing "Brick Hunt" and "Your Precious Moon" with "Brixter Boss Ver. 1" during the LEGO Island and XERRD lab scenes). PeabodySam considered replacing more tracks, such as the "Our Universe" finale with "Empire's Dawn", but decided against it because he acknowledged that the LEGO Universe soundtrack was part of the animation's nostalgic appeal.
Reception[]
On PeabodySam's YouTube channel, VezonWireless, Dino Attack: Legacy is his most-viewed video, with upwards of 385,000 views as of December 2022. It used to consistently see over 100 views a day, but this sharply declined in December 2017 and it now rarely sees more than 10 views a day. It formerly held the highest amount of "likes" on the channel, though it has since been surpassed by other videos. As of May 2022, Dino Attack: Legacy has a rating of about 88% in terms of the "like" to "dislike" ratio. Most comments on the video tend to be positive, frequently praising the references to nostalgic LEGO themes and the use of the LEGO Universe soundtrack. The occasional negative criticisms tend to be aimed at the hard-to-follow story, which is often confusing for those who are not familiar with Dino Attack RPG.
Viewership on DeviantArt was much less strong, with only 1K views and 17 favorites as of June 2020. With Flash support in online browsers being discontinued in late 2020, it can no longer be viewed directly on DeviantArt, which now only displays the static preview image.
The remastered version of Dino Attack: Legacy performed strongly on its opening day, acquiring 40 views and 11 "likes" (with a 100% "like" to "dislike" ratio) in just twelve hours. By the end of its first week, it reached 135 views and 13 "likes" (surpassing the original video's 126 views and 2 "likes" in the same time period), but most of its engagement fell within its first 48 hours before dramatically slowing down by its third day to only about 10 views a day, similar to the original version. According to video analytics, the most-watched scenes during this period were Villains Headquarters, Pirates, Dr. Inferno, and the finale.
Trivia[]
- PeabodySam frequently uses assets from Dino Attack: Legacy as images on Dino Attack RPG Wiki.
- Dino Attack: Legacy was uploaded onto YouTube on September 15, 2012, the same day that ended the final battle in Dino Attack: At War's End. The remastered version was uploaded on December 21, 2022, the tenth anniversary of Dino Attack: At War's End's final post.
- The Infomaniac's Revenge is a parody of Dino Attack: Legacy made during its production, which replaced the Mutant Dinos with the Infomaniac and his green and red 2x4 LEGO bricks. This parody was inspired by a LEGO Island glitch where the Infomaniac would say the phrase "... red brick, you stay! Green..." in an infinite loop. The Infomaniac's Revenge is referenced in the finished version of Dino Attack: Legacy, in which the Infomaniac throws green and red bricks at Mutant Lizards; in the remastered version, he even says the memetic dialogue out loud.
- Dino Attack: Legacy and Knuckles is another parody of Dino Attack: Legacy that replaces nearly all the minifig characters with Knuckles, as a reference to the & Knuckles meme. It was uploaded onto YouTube on April Fools' Day 2017. Ironically, Knuckles does not appear in any capacity in the remastered version; he was not given a cameo during the finale in order to avoid confusion with Roger Remous.
- Assets from Dino Attack: Legacy have continued to be used to create new images for Dino Attack RPG Wiki, including characters such as Ata or Adventure who did not appear in the original version of Legacy; as a result, these characters were able to be easily included in the remastered version. A few new scenes were even animated for the Dino Attack RPG: Director's Cut trailers, two of which (the battle for the Temple of Hotep III and Dr. Rex roaring in the thunderstorm) were even retrofitted into the remastered version of Dino Attack: Legacy.
External Links[]
- Dino Attack: Legacy on YouTube (remastered version)
- Dino Attack: Legacy on YouTube (original version)
- Dino Attack: Legacy Work-In-Progress Playlist
Dino Attack: Legacy on DeviantArt