Lego meets NES

The Lego Group has announced a Lego Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Building Kit for adults, letting grown-up fans create a NES console with Lego bricks. The new kit offers a brick-built NES model packed with realistic details, including an accompanying 1980s style Lego television set, so nostalgic gamers and Lego fans can recreate Super Mario Bros childhood experiences.

It will let adult fans take a trip down memory-lane by using Lego bricks to create a mechanically functional version of the console that started the video game on TV revolution. The new NES Building Kit includes a controller with a connecting cable and plug and an opening slot for the Game Pak with a locking feature. The console also comes with a buildable retro TV, featuring a flat 8-bit Mario figure on the scrolling screen. Users can scan an included action brick with Lego Mario from the Lego Super Mario Starter Course, so he reacts to on-screen enemies, obstacles and power-ups just as he would have in the iconic Super Mario Bros. game.  

“Super Mario has been a cherished figure in the gaming world for over thirty years now,” says Maarten Simons, creative lead on the Lego Nintendo Entertainment System at the Lego Group. “Many adults still fondly remember that first time they saw Mario leap across the small screen, even if the graphics were a lot simpler than they are today. With the Lego Nintendo Entertainment System, we’re letting them truly indulge in that nostalgia, recreating one of the most-loved consoles of all time so they can see the Super Mario from their childhoods once again – and even to share the experience of gaming in the 1980s with their own children.”

The Lego NES will be available exclusively at the Lego Certified Stores nationwide or online at greatyellowbrick.co.za from 1 September 2020 at a R3800. From 2021, it will also be available at other retailers.