Rock Raiders PC Game Instructions

[Daedalus304]

Hello all!

Rock Raiders has always been a special Lego theme to me, since the release of both the sets and the PC game in 1999. I spent a lot of time playing the PC game, and have returned to it over the years. The game included a ton of buildings and a few vehicles that were never released as sets, and since I was little I always had the dream of some day building these models and having a "real" Rock Raiders base for myself. Earlier this year, after spending some time trying to get my original PC game running again, I found the fan remake "Manic Miners" by Baraklava and it really re-ignited my fire for the theme. It's taken a long time, but this year I've finally started to make this dream come true and build these models.

As I've been working on this project, I had a thought - how nice it would be to have actual building instructions for these models! And that is what brings me here. I've spent the last couple months making 1999-style Instruction booklets for each of the buildings and vehicles found in the Lego Rock Raiders game, plus a few bonuses, and I wanted to share these with anybody who is interested in them. The models are not my designs, and neither are a few of the resources (Background art for the pages, etc) used to help make these. These instructions are freely available for anybody to use, and I've formatted the pages with printing in mind - each book's pages are scaled for either a full-sized or a half-sized A4, depending on the model, and each one has an even number of pages as well.

There are 13 Instructions in total, and each one has been given a "set number" as well. I've got instructions for the following buildings and vehicles:


The Canteen shown in the picture was a building intended to be included in the game, but was never completed before release. This interpretation of the design was created by Baraklava.

The Mobile Repair Center and Repair Exosuit are both also 'lost' material for the game. The Repair Center itself is the original design for the Tool Store (As seen in the game's instruction manual), and I've re-purposed it here as the Repair Center. The Repair Exosuit was also from some promotional material, and this design was reverse engineered by many people (not including myself) and shared with the public by R.R. Slugger over on Youtube.


The small truck shown in the picture is actually the prototype of the Small Transport Truck, the design of which later changed to what can be found in the official 4990 Rock Raiders HQ set and is seen in game. This prototype, however, was used in a set of the game's pre-rendered cutscenes, in which two Rock Raiders, Axel and Docs, must use the truck in a desperate escape from a lava flow.


Here's an overview of one of them, the "Small Mobile Laser Cutter".




All of the instruction books can be found right here. There is also a Readme file with some extra information for each model, and another folder with "Instructions Packs" that contains a .zip file which includes the Instructions, a Parts List, and a file with the Bricklink Wanted List XML to build the models - though be warned, many of the printed or unique elements have become very hard to find and/or expensive now. I don't suspect many people will build these, but even for people who don't want to do so I hope that the instructions can help share these models from a game and a series that I've loved for 25 years. Though short-lived, it was a great theme with some really awesome designs and I'd love for others people to get a chance to appreciate them.