Thanks to Ole Kirk Christiansen’s vision (and social worker) children all over the world have been “playing well” and cultivating their imaginations with LEGO sets for years. Since its birth in the 1940s, LEGO has expanded beyond the simple interlocking bricks to introduce thousands of sets with many different themes from pirates to robots to trains—everything that would capture a young child’s imagination.
From there they introduced the LEGO Technic line for more complex creations, and they even created an entire LEGO land for children to visit.
Not content with their monopoly on children’s physical playverse, they’ve begun to branch out—with high success—into the virtual world of video games. In fact, the LEGO film versions of games are usually the only film tie-ins that don’t bomb. To date, they have put out: LEGO Indian Jones based on the old films and recent Crystal Skull, LEGO Harry Potter, Bionicle Heroes, LEGO Rock Band (released in the fall), LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Batman games. Particularly noteworthy is the LEGO Harry Potter and the LEGO Star Wars games. The success of LEGO Star Wars has warranted the production of 3 video games and, in my opinion, is what kick started the LEGO video game campaign.
The latest Star Wars game, LEGO Star Wars 3: Clone Wars, is due for release February 2011. The gameplay is similar to the earlier games and will follow along the storyline set by the animated series. The game features split screen combat and will allow the player to cycle between two different characters during play.
