Ever wondered what LEGO Rock Raiders would look like WITHOUT its trademark colour? Well, wonder no longer!
Photography and other resources used in this video: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/173oLXHJAzQbY_5d3R0WqfFLMCB-pGNGe?usp=sharing
The original music in these videos can be found for free on my Bandcamp page:
https://rrslugger.bandcamp.com/album/r-r-sluggers-rock-raiders-mix-tape
If you haven’t already, check out Manic Miners, a heartfelt recreation of the Lego Rock Raiders PC game: https://manicminers.baraklava.com/
For quality retro Lego conversation in the best online community I have ever been a part of, you can join the discussion on the Manic Miners Discord: https://discord.gg/na3rQmv
Interested in the history and research that goes into videos just like this one? You can join the discussion in the Lego Research Realm Discord: https://discord.gg/VtD99kYvUj
I created the photography, stop motion animation, and music in this video. Original artwork by Brett Halland. Thanks for watching!
High Adventure, Deep Underground.
source
Aaaaaaaaand we’re back! 😊
Up next: Rock raiders without rocks
Ha ha ha, nice late April Fools video, now put the teal back on.
I already really like power miners (partly due to nostalgia), but I'd probably love it even more if the vehicles had that more used looking color palette
HERESY
Amazing video as always!
Those Power Miners sets with stripped back colours actually look so good!
Never felt that theme really captured an industrial feel the way rock raisers did, but those versions make me want to revisit it and do some similar re-industrialisation…
i hope we get more maybe a recolor of the other mining related series of sets
Great video slugger as always! 👍
I will definitly have to try repaint my mocs…
Also @2:14 does that seller steal sell these?
3:40 I'm liking the yellow and Burgundy theme
looks like an Alternative team color for an RTS game
Nick Anderson pointed out in his Rock Raiders video how the colorscheme is not only unique to this theme, but also how they had a more industrial look because of it. I myself love it, and the details like the chipped paint on the long pieces they have on the Chrome Crusher and Granite Grinder make them look rough and worn and I love it! I wish this theme would be remade someday.
To quote Aldaris, unthinkable!
Someone already mentioned how cursed this is (you never fail 😂), so I'll comment on the actual colors instead.
Perhaps teal is indeed the real main color, yellow used for the hi-vis effect, and the greys being the naked metal underneath, with brown suggesting rust. In geneal, I think the colors work well because their relation to metal (old grey is like iron and even teal might give off hints of copper rust), which is not the case for the power miners color scheme.
I really enjoy these palette swaps, the dark red one is especially neat – feels super rusty. I might have to try and do some myself!
I like the idea that the Rock Raiders are the exploratory wing of a much larger mining enterprise. They go out into the frontier to scout unknown planets for resources so their equipment needs to be tough, easily repairable, and modifiable to fit any unique situations. This explains their chunky, well worn, industrial designs and how their equipment uses up energy crystals quickly in the game. By contrast, the Power Miners are more efficient, complex machines that utilize modern composite materials to improve fuel efficiency. They require more infrastructure be set up to operate effectively due to higher maintenance requirements but can scale up operations for large scale mining.
The Rock Raiders go in, find a motherload, send back the coordinates and as they leave to scout another location the Power Miners come in and set up permanent operations.
I always assumed the teal was weathered copper and the brown was newer copper.
Great video! It's interesting to see the best color of the palette removed! Maybe that's what Lego tried out when they retired teal back in the day. They tried the challenge "Can the Lego Group survive 10 years without Dark Turquoise?" I'm so glad they brought the color back, it's one of my favorites!
Heres an impossible challenge lego star wars with no light gray
I don't know why but I kinda expected to see Teal be replaced with White in the video 😀
It's interesting to see how a color change can change the look of builds, it's pretty cool to think about!
I absolutely adore all of Lego's classic themes. There is just something special about the simplicity yet a unique feel that you do not get with modern era Lego. Great content as usual!
I quite like the yellow Loader Dozer at 0:57. It looks more like a construction vehicle you'd encounter in real life.
When I saw the title of the video I thought it was going to be Rock Raiders but with some other colour substituted for teal. Like an alternate universe where Rock Raiders got a reboot, but teal was never re-released as a colour
"More industrial, less Fisher Price" was the line of the episode for me. 😄 I'll never look at Power Miners the same way again.
Next time you should pull off Chief's arm and replace it with a grey one 😁
Those look like the kind of color palette I build with as a kid, since I deemed grey and black to be soo cool! 😅
I love how it was totally unnecessary to include those mega rare non-production color parts, but you did it anyway just to flex
This is such a cool deep worldbuilding concept!
I feel like only a slug of your caliber could bring us this
I like the paintless look. It makes it seem like the Rock Raiders are desperate to pump out new machinery to replace their broken ones, so they stop finishing it with paint to save time and get them out of the factory as fast as possible.
Like what the USSR did during the battle of Stalingrad in ww2. They were rushing to build tanks and vehicles so they stopped painting them to save time
What of it was always copper lol
Rock Riders without teal? Heresy
This is fascinating
I really like the gritty steampunk vibes the Granite Grinder build gives off! And I may be a diehard Power Miners fan, but those recolors are honestly really sweet…
2:55 is this piece old grey? If not, then I have it.
I'd like to think the teal was once a more copper color and what we see is just the oxidation.
I prefer the orange and green of PM to the teals and yellows of RR.
I'd be interested in seeing your overview of power miners, while I totally understand if most people prefer rock raiders and it's personality. Power miners imo is awesome and with some great sets
I love this series!
Where did the jack element come from at 1:37? I would love an automotive hydraulic jack to compliment my mechanic themed builds!
I subbed, , I would Lovem to see you review the Monster Fighters
I think that rollcage could be somewhat replicated with lightsaber bar elements and prayer
Without original colours the rock riders won't come back. Let's hope at least for another generation of miners with new colour scheme like power miners.
The power miners equipment is likely brand new, considering theyre investigating recent seismic phenomena. Its cool seeing it old with the paint chipped off
I wonder if the teal was actually supposed to look like it had miscoloured from age, and the original new equipment was like a light blue
Maybe the teal and yellow are the mining-equipment version of high-vis vests? It's dark down there deep underground, and the "default" colors of the machinery would be super hard to see at a distance, so they might have just painted random portions with whatever as-gaudy-as-possible paints they had on hand at the time to ensure they stuck out from the background, like reverse camo…
I have to tell you that I've always had a problem with the brown colour present in the Rock Raiders set. I know that it's probably supposed to represent rust, but it's just kinda strange to me how sparsely it is used, usually only for the rollcages, chains and stuff like this, which makes the brown really stand out, to me maybe just a bit too much. Personally.
But the worst part is that… I just cannot really convince my brain to not interpret the brown color, well, as wood. When I first saw RR vehicles my brain automatically interpreted the brown pieces as representing wood and I just can't really force it to see it as rusty pipes, bars, rods or chain links. I think I'm slowly getting used to it, but you know, it's a mind thing.
I just want to underline that this is NOT a critique of the theme's color pallette, it's just my personal reflection and feelings which I found interesting enough to share it in this comment ❤️
It's also interesting that, in fact, Power Miners did not completely abandon the idea of conveying the theme of scraped, peeling paint, however it made it more subtle yet more literal at the same time – when you take a look at the stickers, they always depict a very scraped, worn off surface, which is really interesting! It's realising the same idea, that RR used, but in a completely different way!
Rock Raiders without teal and/or yellow? Next thing you're going to tell me is that there are Bionicle sets with no vibrant secondary colors, just monochrome.
(Looks at 2008) …Oh no.
Anyways the grey added to Power Miners makes a huge difference, and seeing that color palette on Rock Raiders sets actually looks kinda cool.
In some ways I like the idea for your more “realistic” Power Miners, but it really ignores the already established color distribution. The lime green is there because they’re mining vehicles, a realistic and well-precedented choice for industrial digging machines. The orange is to denote the most dangerous moving parts of the vehicles. Notice that while the smaller digging parts are entirely orange, larger components like the thunder driller’s drill are almost always merely accented by it. If they weren’t, I’d be right there with you on it looking too toy-like. In addition, the reason for the Power Miners machines not having that “lived-in” feel is because, well, they were just sent down there for the first time! I’ve always seen the light scratches and dents on the sticker details as evidence that even though they’re fresh on the job, it’s still a dangerous area that has already damaged some machinery(sort of like in an action movie, where a showroom car will be riddled with bullet holes but otherwise unscathed). I hope you can at least consider this admittedly not-amazing justification for why the Power Miners sets look the way that they do. Great vid otherwise!
What if the teal is oxidized copper? Like the Statue of Liberty.
ALL HAILE THE KING RR SLUGER