Game on: 30 years of LEGO® video games
The LEGO Group has produced over 200 game titles since releasing its first digital title in 1995. To celebrate the milestone, we replayed some of our best-loved gaming hits, while also checking out some exciting new releases.
Thirty years ago in Japan, the LEGO Group tried something new. After many decades dedicated to making physical toys, we released our first ever video game, LEGO® Fun to Build, created with Japanese gaming giant SEGA.
Though a one-country experiment, Fun to Build was the start of something big. The LEGO brick has never gone away, of course, but that first foray into gaming pointed the way to a broader future for the LEGO Group in which creative play could be experienced in different ways. The ambition was to ensure that the LEGO brand was engaging with children wherever they happened to be playing, whether they were building with LEGO bricks on their bedroom floor or zapping space invaders on a games console.
Championing that vision, the LEGO® G.A.M.E team has been innovating nonstop for 30 years to bring creative play to every imaginable style of video game for fans around the world.
“Over the years, we’ve explored everything from puzzle-solving and platforming to city-building and open-world storytelling,” said Kari Vinther Nielsen, LEGO® G.A.M.E’s Head of Product, Play & Creator Growth. For all their variety, the common thread running through all those games has been characteristic playfulness and sense of fun. It has enabled the team to put the familiar LEGO stamp on popular themes such as Star Wars™ and Harry Potter™ – and help turn those games into global blockbusters.
“Franchises like LEGO® Star Wars™ brought our unique humour and brick-based storytelling to life in ways fans hadn’t seen before,” Kari said.
For the team, the challenge was greater than simply creating good games: it was to bridge the worlds of physical and digital play to the point where children would barely even notice when they switched between the two.
“LEGO games have become extensions of the LEGO System in Play,” said Fredrik Loving, SVP & Head of LEGO GAME. “Builders and gamers can now move seamlessly between creating in the real world and building in the digital world.” New releases like 2025’s LEGO Party! and LEGO Voyagers show the gaming team is still gaining momentum – motivated, Fredrik said, by the LEGO Group’s passionate community of builders and gamers alike. “It is those fans that inspire us to push boundaries, think creatively and tell stories that keep them coming back,” he said.
For the 80-member LEGO® G.A.M.E team, there’s so much still to come as the LEGO portfolio continues to grow and new partnerships develop. But as they look back on three decades of LEGO gaming, Kari and Fredrik mark the anniversary by revisiting some of their personal favourites – games that truly took LEGO play to the next level.
1997: LEGO® ISLAND
This was a groundbreaking open-world adventure combining free-form exploration with story-driven gameplay.
Playing as pizza delivery boy Pepper Roni or one of four other main characters, the aim of the game was to stop the nefarious Brickster before he could dismantle the island by stealing all of the bricks. As in any good video game, victory was short-lived: the villain was soon back in 2001’s LEGO® Island 2: The Brickster’s Revenge.
1999: LEGO® RACERS
LEGO® Racers was a landmark racing game that gave players the ability to design and build their own LEGO cars and then race them on an exotic range of tracks scattered across the fictional LEGOland universe.
Simultaneously tapping into LEGO builders’ passion for brick-built cars and also gamers’ love of the racing genre, LEGO® Racers set a new standard for combining construction, customisation and competitive racing, becoming a stone-cold classic and giving rise to multiple sequels.
2005: LEGO® STAR WARS™: THE VIDEO GAME
This game marked the beginning of the LEGO® Star Wars™ games series and was the first LEGO game by developer Traveller’s Tales, with which LEGO would produce dozens of its most successful video game titles.
LEGO® Star Wars™ adapted the full prequel trilogy into an action-packed adventure where players controlled some of the movies’ best-loved characters, and also Jar Jar Binks, to solve puzzles and complete daring missions in the galactic struggle between good and evil. No trade negotiations in sight!
2013: LEGO® MARVEL™: SUPER HEROES
Another classic in the LEGO game library, this was the first game in the LEGO® Marvel series and featured an original story spanning the entire Marvel Universe.
Players would take control of Iron Man, Wolverine and other iconic Marvel superheroes as they unite to stop Loki and a host of other comic-book villains from assembling a super-weapon capable of destroying the world. This was the one time LEGO fans could say, “I am Iron Man,” without it being completely fanciful.
2022: LEGO® STAR WARS™: THE SKYWALKER SAGA
Spanning Star Wars Episodes I to IX, THE SKYWALKER SAGA tied all nine movies together in one LEGO® Star Wars™ extravaganza that came loaded with significant gameplay enhancements compared to previous editions.
Across 45 epic levels, the saga immersed players in the Star Wars galaxy by giving them the freedom to control hundreds of characters, ships and vehicles, and to create their own unique journey through the decades-long rivalry between the Jedi and the Sith.
2023: LEGO® FORTNITE
The LEGO Group’s partnership with Fortnite maker Epic Games opened a new chapter in LEGO play, enabling the gaming team to merge LEGO’s creative building with the expansive gameplay of the Fortnite universe.
In LEGO® Fortnite Odyssey players can build homesteads and recruit villagers to help them collect resources, tame animals and craft powerful items – all across a vast virtual world spanning snowy mountains, desert oases and sultry islands in which, somewhere, lurks the Storm King and his evil minions.
2025: LEGO® PARTY!
A 4-player party game where you compete against your friends in couch co-op or cross play in wacky Challenge Zones and 60 hilarious minigames from across your favorite LEGO sets like LEGO Pirates, LEGO Space, LEGO NINJAGO®.
With multiple game modes and tons of minifigures to unlock, you’ll have all the bricks to build the ultimate party!
2025: LEGO® VOYAGERS
A 2-player cooperative LEGO play experience where players of all ages embark on a journey full of platforming challenges and puzzles, all while playing as iconic LEGO bricks.
Experience what it feels like to be a LEGO brick. Tumble, jump, snap together, and build your way through poetic puzzles and atmospheric environments. LEGO® Voyagers is a non-verbal narrative about friendship, growing together, and the joy of creative play… an experience that’s always better when shared with a friend.
