This article's current status is disputed.This article has been given a rating in the past but may not meet the current requirements for this status. Please help to improve this article until it meets those requirements. More details can be found in the Quality Check Group Forums. Alpha Team is a theme released in 2001, initially based on the video game LEGO Alpha Team, which was created by Digital Domain and released a year prior in 2000. The theme centers around a team of secret agents known as the Alpha Team, and their efforts to stop the nefarious villain Ogel from taking over the world. It initially ran from 2001 to 2002, with those years being the most closely related to the original video game. After a one year hiatus in 2003, the theme was revived from 2004 to 2005 with an altered cast of characters, new logo, and focus on transforming vehicles. Main article: LEGO Alpha Team Visual effects company and then-consumer software developer Digital Domain pitched the concept for what would become LEGO Alpha Team to LEGO Media in 1998.
The game was first imagined and remains as a puzzle game where the player builds LEGO contraptions and directs minifigures to solve puzzles. For the first year and a half of development, the game had a surreal and imaginative theme, with a variety of different characters forming the "Trans-International LEGO Team" (or TILT) and worlds based on objects in a real house (for example, Aromazona, a world of giant flowers, which corresponded to a flower pot in the real world). A year and a half into production (six months before release), LEGO Media told the developers to completely overhaul the game and give it a "spy" theming, thinking the original concept didn't fit in with how they marketed themes. The game was quickly revised, and Digital Domain designed entirely new characters, keeping only Tee Vee and Ogel from the earlier ideas. The final game puts the player in the role of the Alpha Team chief, in a space station orbiting Earth, commanding the Alpha Team members as they infiltrate Ogel's four bases (Ogel Island, the Goo Caverns, the Deep Sea Orb Factory, and the secret Arctic Command Base).
The player is guided by Tee Vee, and commands rest of the Alpha Team: The game's plot revolves around Ogel making Evil Orbs that turn regular townspeople into mindless zombies, and rescuing captured Alpha Team members (all but Dash have been captured at the start of the game). A Game Boy Color version of the game was also developed, which retained the same basic gameplay as the PC game. The first release of Alpha Team sets featured a vehicle for every team member, and a small vehicle and base for Ogel, 6776 Ogel Control Center, which featured an evil orb-dropping rocket seemingly inspired by the Boggle Rocket in the video game (though the Ogel Control Center is inside of a volcano on an island according to the set description/set instruction comics, while the Boggle Rocket was in an arctic base in the video game). The character's designs were altered somewhat to work as real minifigures, such as using existing hair pieces, and Ogel using an existing armor piece originally produced for the Zotaxians instead of the custom piece he had in the video game.
The zombies were renamed to skeleton drones and given a standard skeleton head instead of the custom print they had in the video game. While the video game had various types of zombies, there is only one type of skeleton drone in this first wave of sets, which is based on the Guard zombie type in the game. Evil orbs also have a different appearance due to the original design using a piece that didn't actually exist. Dash was referred to as the team leader in places like LEGO Mania Magazine and the Evil Music online game (see below), a role he kept for the rest of the theme as the chief in the video game (just the player) was never mentioned again. Six small online games were released, each putting the player in control of an agent. Additionally, an online Comic Adventure called Evil Music was released, which follows Dash and Cam as they they try to stop Ogel from controlling the world's weather via a special pipe organ. The character designs in this Comic Adventure are based on those in the original video game rather than the minifigures in the sets.
The 2002 line of sets took the theme underwater with "Mission Deep Sea". The story involved Ogel modifying his evil orbs to mutate sea creatures, to control the world's oceans. The character designs were again modified, with new diving outfits for the Alpha Team, and an alternate body for Tee Vee that was an undersea rover. The skeleton drones had diving gear and a new face print, and Ogel gained a red hook where one of his hands used to be, for reasons unknown. Another set of six small missions were released, as well as another Comic Adventure, Into The Deep. The new six training missions were: Into The Deep game starred Dash, Cam, Radia, and Tee Vee as they discovered and thwarted Ogel's plan to control the oceans, saving a team of underwater scientists and the sea creatures and destroying Ogel's underwater base. In 2003, only one Alpha Team polybag, 3391 Dash, was released. It was assumed by many fans that the line was cancelled. In 2004, Alpha Team was massively revised.
The theme's logo was changed, many of the characters had different appearances than in previous years, and Cam and Crunch were omitted in lieu of agents Arrow and Diamond Tooth respectively. Other changes included Tee Vee becoming a humanoid robot, Ogel's hook colour changing from red to blue, and Ogel's minions getting new outfits (still similar to their Mission Deep Sea designs) and being referred to as Ice Drones. Alpha Team vehicles were given a new feature, known as Alpha Mode, which allowed them to be transformed into another vehicle without disassembling them. This time, Ogel had a completely different plan, in which he was using his new Ice Orbs to freeze the world. Alpha Team tracked him to Antarctica, where he succeeded in freezing Alpha Team, the rest of the world, and even time itself. The Team were saved by Zed, an Alpha Team special agent, who was protected from the time freeze by his vehicle, which was equipped for such an event. He defrosted the Alpha Team agents, and then battled Ogel's Scorpion Orb Launcher.
The LEGO Magazine invited members to send in submissions of what they thought would happen in the battle, although they were not published in the magazine, and members did not see the end of the battle. It is generally assumed that Zed defeated Ogel. A large three-part web game was also released in 2004. The three missions were named The First Encounter, Drones' Menace, and Ogel's Fortress, respectively. This game mostly focused on top-down exploration and light combat in vehicles, although Agents could disembark at special pads to infiltrate Ogel's bases. From there, you could play as the agents themselves from a side perspective. Vehicles could also shift between their normal modes and Alpha Modes, which had different abilities. The game ends with a boss battle with all the Alpha Team vehicles vs Ogel, who are victorious, and the story concludes without involving Zed. While this run of the theme had no official subtitle, fans took to calling it "Mission Deep Freeze" on forums online, which LEGO eventually officially adopted and used in later books that mentioned the theme.