Four new Power-Up Packs are launching concurrently with the LEGO Super Mario starter set on August 1st. The Power-Up Packs are smaller upgrades to the core sets, but proper expansions featuring new characters like Bowser and Dry Bones are also on their way. Initially teased during Nintendo’s Mario Day celebration back in March, the LEGO-Mario crossover took years to finally emerge. Both companies reportedly worked closely on the project, consulting one of the iconic plumber’s creators to ensure the sets expressed the Nintendo philosophy.
The LEGO Super Mario starter set includes brick-ified versions of Mushroom Kingdom monsters, including an ever-squashable goomba and blank-eyed Shy Guy. Players take out their foes with an elaborate, electronic Mario figure which visibly and audibly reacts to the sets via images on an LED screen built into his stomach and a series of game-accurate sound effects. Players can construct their own levels and interact with the sets through a smartphone app.
Jonathan Bennink, lead designer for the LEGO Group, announced the expansions in a video posted to the company’s YouTube channel. Each pack includes a costume for the Mario figure which augments and enhances the way players run through levels. With the red and white fire suit, the plucky plumber can throw fireballs to take out enemies (the video shows a player tilting the Mario figure forward to launch the invisible attack). Both the propeller suit and catsuit allow Mario to gain extra coins by taking advantage of each costume’s agility boost. And finally, the Super Mario Maker inspired builder suit ironically enables players to win coins by exercising their destructive urges: raising and slamming the toolbelt clad, safety-hatted Mario onto any part of the set snags him extra coins.
The Lego Super Mario set is the perfect first collaboration between LEGO and Nintendo. Mario’s world, in its classic form, exists in 8-bit bricks which translate seamlessly into the LEGO style; expansions including Luigi or Wario, Peach or even Rosalina take little to imagine. Unlike earlier Mario adaptations, LEGO’s style and sensibility match the colorful, cute Mario universe.
The set and costumes are an opening salvo in a hopefully long, potentially rich partnership between the two beloved childhood fixtures. LEGO eagerly snaps up every property known to man, spewing an endless stream of creative video games, movies, and toys. An expanded slate of Nintendo-themed LEGO board games, each mirroring the game’s that inspire them, would open the floodgates for new, clever adaptations: How would Link look, rendered in brick? Or Kirby, whose diverse set of abilities could inspire countless power-up packs of their own.
Source: LEGO/Youtube