Out of the hundreds of successful game projects I've worked on, one game in particular is by far the one that people have talked to me about most. Whether expressing a fond childhood memory of playing it, or an inspirational impact it had on them and their hobbies or careers, LEGO Racers is easily the most asked about game I've had a hand in making.
Not only have I been asked directly about it many times in the 27 years since it was released, but I've been interviewed for a website, asked to be on a podcast, invited to be on YouTube channels, approached about a potential documentary, and have had a number of emails asking questions since I put up this website.
Even though I love the positive attention and hearing about people's enjoyment and appreciation of LEGO Racers, I'm not an extraordinarily extroverted person, I'm naturally wary of public speaking (even in recorded text), and I have crippling stage fright when it comes to being in any kind of spotlight or center of attention situation. Due to these shortcomings of mine, for many years I have avoided, turned down, and hid from most every offer or opportunity to publicly talk about this game that I am proud to have worked on.
That was until I was encouraged by an old coworker to talk to someone that had reached out to them about the making of LEGO Racers. Because it was a friend that I trusted and respected sending them my way, I hesitantly agreed to talk to them, and that became my interview with the website Bricks to Bytes, and the first time I talked publicly about my work.
This interview along with seeing YouTube videos about this decades old game, made me aware that there was a much greater interest and memory of this game than I had realized. There is an actual community of fans out there that grew up playing something I helped make,...and that is an amazing feeling that I'm forever grateful and thankful to those people for expressing to me.
It is all the encouragement and just the push I needed to force myself out of my safe little comfort zone of introversion, and share with all those people who bothered to seek me out and ask.
So, I have a filing cabinet full of original LEGO Racers drawings and designs and hard copy materials from the development of the game that require scanning in to share with people, which takes precious time. Also, despite my aversion to public speaking, if asked something I'm passionate and knowledgeable about, I can effortlessly talk lengthily ad nauseam about it...which is also quite time consuming. I quickly found answering individual emails to be an increasingly daunting effort in which I was repeating myself frequently, and even copy pasting chunks of responses to similar questions, plus I had to start keeping track of who I shared what images with. That's why I decided to just consolidate my answers to questions, development stories, and whatever materials I end up sharing all here in one place where everyone has access to it. I will still continue to respond to emails and enjoy the personal conversations with the individual people who contact me, but the LEGO stuff I share will post here moving forward. I just ask for a little time and patience to post and scan things, because I don't have tons of free time, and this is not exactly a priority activity while I am doing my best to just manage regular life, raising my kid the best I can, and beginning a search for my next employment during what has to be the most volatile and unstable employment environment for videogame developers I've ever witnessed.
Again, I extend a heartfelt Thank You to everyone who has expressed interest and appreciation of this game or any of my work. Your words and attention are cherished and uplifting in ways I struggle to express.
With gratitude,
Pete McLennon
Pete back then.
Pete now.
LEGO RACERS Q&A RETROSPECTIVE
I admittedly have a bunch to catch up on, but for now just to get past the hardest part which is simply starting, I'll begin pretty much where I began on the LEGO Racers project all the way back around 1995, with the very first thing I drew for the game. Simply an idea of what a themed LEGO racetrack might look like. Sort of a visual proof of concept.
Sorry that the paper is yellowed and the colors are half bleached out, but after making this, it ended up getting thrown in the back window of my car where it sat in the sun for like a year or so before I cleaned it out and found it again.
MORE ACCURATE CREDITS
Before going further into the making of LEGO Racers, I would like to remedy one thing that never sat too comfortably with me. Just like most successful games, LEGO Racers was the result of a collaborative team effort by a whole bunch of talented and creative people who all deserve recognition and credit for their work, however after a lengthy development cycle when the game was finally released, only the people actively on the team at the end of the project were credited. A large number of people that had put a noteworthy amount of time and effort into the game were omitted or left out of the credits just because they moved on to other projects or left the company, but I don't believe that diminishes their contribution or that it should deny them proper credit, so I'm going to attempt to compile a more complete and accurate list of credits for the High Voltage Software employees that made up the fluxuating team over the whole development process. I'll also try to sort out a clearer picture of who worked on what notable features too....more for my own satisfaction than anything else. Apologies for any name misspellings or people I may have forgotten to include myself. (I'll add further elaboration on more specific contributions as I find out or remember.)
Kerry Ganofsky - Company Owner
(Original idea to set us loose to "Make a LEGO game where you get to build your own car and race it.")
Keith J. Morton - Producer.... and an "Executive" one no less. So fancy.
Tomas Gillo - Senior Producer from LEGO Media
(The official liaison between High Voltage and LEGO)
Scott Corley - Programming Director
Dwight Luetscher - Lead Programmer
Hal Bouma - Programming
Andrew Falth - Programming
Jeff Marshall - Programming
Adisak Pochanayon - Programming
Dave Scheele - Programming
Rich Fiore - Art Director
(This has to be one of the most egregious exclusions from the credits of someone who was there in a very significant and impactful capacity from the very beginning.)
Pat Dolan - Designer / Artist
(Also a huge omission considering he single handedly wrote the original first draft of the LEGO Racers design document.)
Cary Penczek - Soft Spoken Lead Artist
(Looking back to list notable contributions, I am only now realizing just how much Cary had his hands on in the making of this game. I can't really list it because he quietly and unassumingly did a ton of work on almost every aspect of this game. I never voiced it then, but you have my respect and admiration, sir.)
Pete McLennon - Artist / Concept Artist / Designer
(Concept Art, Track Designs, Environments, Cars, Characters, Story, Storyboards, UI, Maps, Powerups, Testing, Localization, Textures, Builder, Etc.)
(Side note: I think you could arguably list almost everyone on the project as a designer since the game we ended up with truly formed and evolved out of the collaborative input of just about every person involved.)
Damion Davis - Artist / Concept Artist
Joe Stinchcomb - Technical Artist / Modeler / Multi-Talented Jack of All Trades
(Tracks, Effects, Proof of Concept for the epic Warp Powerup, Work-a-holic Stress-Puppy)
Gabe Bott - Artist / Modeler / Animator
(Boss Intros, Adventure Temple Trail)
Bill Eng - Artist / Modeler / Animator
Gary Oliverio - Artist / Modeler / Animator
Brian Schultz - Artist / Modeler / Animator
Kelly Seider - Artist / Modeler / Animator
Brian Westergaard - Artist / Modeler
Greg Onychuck - Artist / Modeler
(Magma Moon Marathon)
Paul Russel - Artist
(Created the original LEGO font used in the game.)
Pav Kovacic - Artist / Modeler
Stephen Unterfranz - Artist / Modeler
Emilio Chronopolous - Artist / Modeler
Pascal Sain-Claire - Artist / Modeler
Eric Jeffry - Artist / Modeler / Animator
Sergio (I feel terrible that I can't remember his last name) - Artist / Modeler
Joe Whitaker - Artist / Sound / Video
(...and for a while, the best roommate I ever had)
Eric Nofsinger - Music / Sound Design
(That brilliant earworm of a soundtrack that has lived rent free in my head for literal decades now.)
Chad Portwine - Sound Engineer
Michael Caisley - Sound Engineer
Houman Gharamonlou (Sorry, sorry, I know I must have butchered his last name horribly just trying to remember it) - Our ever-present I.T. guy always coming to the rescue when the programmers couldn't.
Kevin Sheller - Tester
William Golz - Tester
The original group that started it all.
Welcoming an important visitor from LEGO
