The designers share all the secrets of the fun and nostalgic whole

I owe everything to the original game. If there had not been for the gray brick of Nintendo of a pocket computer, and a copy of Super Mario LandI doubt that I will write these words on Gizmodo. It was the gadget that started my obsession for life for advanced technology and my passion to share it with others. So excuse me for being overwhelmed with emotion and nostalgia when LEGO announced that it was making a brick version of 421 pieces of the iconic Nintendo Handheld.

Released on October 1 for $ 60, Lego Game Boy is a fairly easy construction. Lego says that it is for the 18th and over, but there was nothing complicated for a 10 -year -old child not to follow the instructions. (However, they would not have nostalgia for the pocket computer which was released in 1989.) It took me about 1 hour and 15 minutes, but I think it would have taken less than an hour if I had not stopped to shoot B-Roll for a social video. (Everything is fun and games build Lego sets after work; it is also a job for me.)

As I noted in my practices a few weeks earlier, the LEGO Game Boy game is more than a charming room and almost 1: 1. In addition to the pressable buttons, scrolling dials and the calidable feeder, you can also make brick versions appear Super Mario Land And Zelda’s legend: Link’s awakening The game cartridges in the Game Boy Lego. Remove the rear blanket and you have access to the exchange in three different lenticular screens featuring the two games and the famous Game Boy bootup screen with the sliding Nintendo logo down.

There are tons of Easter eggs inside the Lego Game Boy which make it more than a simple deep recreation. I spoke with Carl Merriam, a senior designer in the Lego group, and Simon Kent, a design director of the Lego group, who worked on the Lego Boy game ready to find some of its invisible secrets.

Design the game Lego Game Boy

There have been strongly written opinions on the company which obtains credit for the Lego Game Boy. Is it Lego or is it Nintendo? The answer is both – as it should be. Nintendo is famous for being extremely protective of its IP – its products, franchises and characters are well kept and require high -level approval. To make a Lego version of the Game Boy, Merriam and Kent had to go beyond the exterior gray shell and pink buttons.

“Nintendo was very involved,” Kent, who has been in Lego for almost 20 years, told Gizmodo. “We have a team that works in Japan … They essentially allow us to connect to different IP teams or material teams or even creative teams within Nintendo to obtain the right information to make the product as best it can be.

Merriam, a senior designer who has been in Lego for 12 years, started as a fan before landing at the toy company. He worked on Lego sets, including Boost, Minecraft and Super Mario, to name some popular series. For the Game Boy, which, according to him, took about a year from the concept to development, the team experienced 10 to 20 iterations before landing on the final design and to refine it to feel very special, additional Nintendo-Y.

The dimensions of the Game Boy have proven to be restrictive in what Lego could do, but in the end, I would say that it is semi-made for the pocket computer, which must be congratulated.

“We don’t really have a lot of room here to do a lot of things, and we have played with all kinds of different functional ways to make you do something with the games,” Merriam told Gizmodo. “It turned out that the only thing we could achieve everywhere in the whole was to do that all the buttons have the same haptic feedback as the real device, or as close as possible in Lego bricks.”

He said that each area of ​​Lego Game Boy was a design challenge in itself. Merriam says that he probably built 30 to 40 versions for the way D-PAD, pimples and switches. I noticed this attention to details while I was building the LEGO ensemble. Behind the D-PAD is actually a small piece of rubber which gives it a spring when you press in it. The same goes for buttons A and B; These are in fact minifig hats painted in pink, and there is a small elastic behind them which gives them a familiar button trip when it is pressed. The starting and selection buttons are the black tire parts changed in gray, and they go back to 1969, Kent told me. By comparing the orders of Game Boy Lego with my original game boy that my mother bought in 1993, I must say that it is impressive how hard to reproduce it.

I asked how they had approached the construction of the Lego Game Boy – they first model it in 3D or simply go to construction? How will you even choose the pieces? It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of unique lego pieces available. With an entire safe that goes back almost 70 years to select, where to start? Of course, Lego could – and he did – create some new personalized pieces for the Game Boy, but where is creativity to make many new parts?

“My mind is built in the LEGO system, so every time I see something in the real world, I see a LEGO piece that might be that thing,” said Merriam. He explained to me how the clear panel for the Lego Game Boy screen is actually a window frame which is “quite old”, and it was a good problem to have to design it so that it is correctly centered.

As for personalized pieces … Well, you can try to know which it is, or I could simply tell you. This implies one of the corners of the Lego Game Boy.

“We wanted to somehow incorporate everything that was mobile about the Game Boy,” added Kent. “We have had discussions – should we make devices that can plug in?” Should he come with headphones? Should it be a little light (like the Light Magnifier game)? But, in the end, we wanted to stay simple and focused on … Take their favorite games and play them anywhere. “

Speaking of games, the interior of the cartridges or game paks as it is officially called, were something that happened later in the process, after having finished doing the external case and ensuring that all the functions worked. In the Zelda Cart of play, there is a “backup battery” piece which reproduces the way the game paks has preserved your progress of play.

A burning question that I had to ask the two was the way the attachment / similar to a kickstand which keeps the lenticular screens in place is called. “I call it a dingler, I have no technical term for that,” said Merriam. So there, you have it, he is unofficially called a dingler!

No more Lego Nintendo consoles to come?

The Game Boy is the second Nintendo console that Lego a Brickified. The first was the Lego Nes ensemble released in 2020. This set was larger, had more rooms and was more expensive. Kent says that the Lego Game Boy was an attempt by Nintendo Set more affordable.

“For a long time, the team in general wanted to do the Game Boy, and we thought it was probably the right time, and we also wanted to explore a different price,” Kent said. “Obviously, the NES came with a television. It is a higher price, so we wanted to do something smaller to test this area.”

I tried to make Merriam and Kent tell me if there are more Lego Nintendo consoles on the way, but they would not let anything. So, if you wait for a Lego SNES, N64 or Gamecube, you will only have to wait.

Pure joy and pleasure

When I saw the Game Boy Lego, I was both excited and curious to see how it would differentiate from the many fans’ creations. I was surprised – or maybe I shouldn’t have been – that Merriam and Kent did not look at fans’ creations.

“If you are looking for something related to intellectual property, there is probably a Lego version somewhere,” Kent said. “We are very careful about this exact reason. We deliberately do not look at the equipment linked to fans because we want to focus on the real thing and do what we think is the right thing with the partner with which we collaborate.”

“One of the most interesting differences between being a Lego fan and the Lego designer is that we design a product so that people can build at home, and experience product construction is a completely different challenge than to make something look like,” said Merriam.

At the end of the day, the Lego Game Boy – or any LEGO together, really – should be fun to build. Yes, I often accelerate the sets of LEGO build, but this is generally done to the detriment of all the care which has been devoted to the design not only of the appearance of the construction ended outside, but inside.

“The Lego system is like a language,” said Merriam. “I like to try to write poetry with the Lego system. From time to time, I can get there, and I think I made it in it. ”