New Nintendo Lego kit is a beautiful piece of moving pixel art of Mario and Yoshi【Photos】

Super Mario World inspires 16-bit-style Lego kit.

When Lego’s designers are creating crossovers with other entertainment franchises, you have to figure the most challenging part of the job is figuring out “How do we recreate that in blocks?” Time and again, though, they’ve risen to the challenge, like with the beautiful Nintendo Legend of Zelda kits they recently revealed.

But conceptualization was probably a lot simpler, though the results no less awesome, for the newest collaboration between the Danish toymaker and Japanese video game developer, which is coming in the form of the brand-new Super Mario World: Mario and Yoshi kit.

That’s because the set’s inspiration is specifically the in-game graphics of Super Mario World the 1990 Super Famicom/Super NES launch title that served as Mario’s 16-bit debut. While modern-day side-scroller Mario games (like last year’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder) place three-dimensional polygonal character models in a two-dimensional field of action, back in Super Mario World, Mario, Yoshi, and the environment they adventured in were all pixel art, made of mosaics of little blocks with different colors. And since “little blocks with different colors” is a succinct description of not just pixels, but Legos too, it’s a pretty easy mental leap to put the two together like this.

Lego’s designers didn’t just fire up an old SNES, snap a screenshot, and then just match up digital and plastic block colors, though. While the Mario and Yoshi kit is largely a decorative piece (and also a large decorative piece, measuring 40 x 26 x 11 centimeters [15.5 x 10 x 4 inches]), it’s got some cool motion gimmicks too.

Turning the handles and cranks you create as part of the build will animate Yoshi’s running legs and make him stick his tongue out, and if you’ve got a Lego Mario, Luigi, or Peach figure from one of the other Lego Nintendo kits, you can link it with the Mario and Yoshi kit’s Action Tag for digital reactions and to play music from Super Mario World.

The 1,215-piece kit is priced at 18,980 yen in Japan and US$129.99 in the U.S. The official on-sale date is October 1, but pre-orders have already started through the U.S. Lego online store here.

Source: PR Times, Lego
Top image: Lego
Insert images: Lego, PR Times
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