Who here remembers Lego Island? While modern Lego games have found success by adapting other established IPs, with Lego Horizon Adventures being the newest example, 1997’s Lego Island remains something of a cult classic, even if The Lego Group doesn’t remember it. Or so we thought until the release of another Fortnite/Lego collaboration, which features Lego Island‘s main character in a cameo role.
Recently, The Lego Group added a new Fortnite Island for players to download called Lego Tycoon: Tilted Towers. As you can gather from the name, it has you rebuilding the iconic Fortnite locale, albeit in Lego form, while also farming resources, establishing new businesses, and defending the city from all manner of disasters, like floods and zombie invasions. It seems like some harmless fun and a neat diversion from the main Lego Fortnite mode, but fans quickly caught on to a cameo appearance by Lego Island‘s Pepper Roni (yes, that is his real name) in the announcement trailer on Twitter.
At one point in the trailer, we go inside of a pizzeria, where we see Pepper manning the booth, identified by his ginger hair, red cap, and the exact same shirt he wore in Lego Island. This deep cut of a cameo has been more than enough to make older Lego fans happy as evidenced by some of the Twitter replies. “Blast from the past! What an AWESOME Easter Egg reference. Mama and Papa Brick would be proud!” wrote one fan, while a couple others hope this will lead to Pepper getting his own Fortnite skin. Unsurprisingly, this has also sparked some demands for a re-release of Lego Island, which would be neat considering it’s not readily available anywhere (at least legally).
For context, the original Lego Island launched on PC in 1997, and was a first-person open world adventure game where Pepper had to save the island from the evil Brickster (where’s his Fortnite cameo?). It saw a more fleshed out sequel in 2001, followed by a third title in 2002 called Island Xtreme Stunts all about Pepper being a stuntman for an action movie. Guess the career change didn’t pan out if he’s back to making and delivering pizzas. Unless he’s made other appearances elsewhere that I’m not aware of, this means Pepper hasn’t been seen in over 20 years. No wonder Lego Island fans are thrilled to see him pop up in Fortnite.
The odds of any of the Lego Island games seeing a remake or re-release are probably very low. However, a team of fans are putting together the next best thing: their own sequel dubbed Project Island. It still sounds like it’s a long way away from releasing, with the team currently working on a playable demo that, at the time of writing, lacks any sort of release window.
