About the pictures, use [ center ] [img ] [/img ] [ /center ] (Pardon the spaces, IDK the NoBBCode BBCode).
Boba, you have played too many modern games, and are unfairly comparing LEGO Island to them.
Those models are very good, actually. You have to remember that this was made in 1996. There were no quad-core CPUs, 3GB GPUs, and 1080p monitors. Back then, high-end computers had a 3.5 inch 2GB HDD, about 100MB of RAM and 500MHz CPUs. This game was made to run on almost all modern PCs for the day. For 3D games, this was high-end. I might even say that this game was a high-poly game. You want to see horrible models, play LI with IslandQuality set to 0. Then we will talk about "standard models".
Again, this is 1996, not 2012. Yes, the code could have been written a bit better, but it cannot be compared to modern games with hundreds of thousands of code for just a small section of the game.
Not possible. According to Wes Jenkins, a LEGO Island dev, they had trouble fitting everything on a CD, and almost didn't make it. A CD holds 700MB. That means their models and audio and code would total around that area. Since they had trouble fitting everything on, they put everything in the SI files to make space (Hint hint to creak the SI files). They did not have DVDs that held 4.7 GB; movies in that day came on VHS tapes, and 3.5 inch floppy discs were today's flash drives. LEGO Island could not have had more games unless they super compressed the files. And considering that they were on a release deadline and they were fired the day before release, it was not possible, and it did not happen.
I support my claim that you are unfairly comparing LEGO Island, a game from 1996, to modern games from 2010+.