I want you to think back to the nostalgic noises of your childhood. Those iconic sounds that were carefully and cleverly crafted to worm their way through your ears and into your brains. The wild crashes, bangs, and booms in those Looney Tunes cartoons. The “tsche-chu-chu-chu-tsche” every time an Autobot or Decepticon transforms. The bongo-ed pitter-patter of feet whenever Scooby and Shaggy are on the run. The twinkle that lets us know that something has changed in Back to the Future.
You know what I’m talking about. You can hear what I’m talking about. They are sounds so completely ingrained into our collective pop-culture (sub)consciousness that even now, decades later, the mere hint of them is enough to trigger waves of sentimental longing.
This is the miracle of LEGO’s new Super Mario sets, which might just be one of their best contrivances yet. The collection, which currently consists of the Adventures with Mario Starter Course, eight Expansion Sets, and a bunch of Character Packs, are built around a Mario figurine with LCD displays for his eyes, mouth, and torso, as well as a speaker that faithfully recreates all those familiar sounds from the video game franchise.
How all of this works is really rather clever. A motion sensor, accelerometer, and camera allow the figurine to interpret your real world actions, before activating the corresponding audio-visual feedback. The accuracy and precision of which is absolutely flawless.
Bounce Mario up and down, and you’ll hear that classic jumping sound. Do it three times in a row and Mario will “yah,” “wahaa,” and “yahoo” his way through a triple jump. He will make cartoony walking noises as he moves, grabbing the occasional coin (ta-ding!) along the way. He falls asleep and snores if you leave him lying on his back for too long. Take off his pants and he’ll exclaim, “Mamma Mia!”
Use Mario to scan one of the many barcodes that are littered across the playsets and he’ll do everything from squishing a Goomba to doubling in size after consuming a Super Mushroom. Place him over a blue LEGO tile and his chest display will indicate that he’s in water. The green tiles are stand-ins for the verdant overworlds of the Mushroom Kingdom. The red tiles represent the deadly fire pits we encounter inside Bowser’s castle.
How you play – and you do play – is simple. You build your components and create a “level.” You plonk Mario down on a warp pipe, get that countdown going, and run him through your pretend course, collecting coins and defeating foes, before the timer runs out and those 60 seconds are up.
The magic here is that all of this happens by way of the sounds you hear. We know exactly what’s happening at all times in this world that we’ve conceived in our minds. The LEGO Goomba doesn’t actually get squished. Our plastic Mario, who is regrettably constrained by the laws of physics, can’t actually double in size. But the noises he makes, and the music he plays, are enough to spark our imaginations.
It’s genius.
And it wasn’t just me – the avid fan who has played (and completed) every Mario game in existence – who felt this way. Enter Kara and Katelyn, ages eight and six respectively, neither of whom have had any experience with Mario, his games, or his “mickey mousing.”
The way they responded to the set was astounding. Its effect, immediate. It took me all of five minutes to explain how everything worked, and they were off to the races. They would run Mario through a course, and then quickly pull it apart, rearrange the obstacles, and do it again. They instinctively understood what every sound effect represented. They quickly figured out what every barcode meant, and was supposed to do. (Katelyn, however, kept insisting that Bowser Jr. should also be allowed to run through the level. She refused to believe me when I told her that his only function was to be flipped over and stomped on by Mario three times. Kids!)
For me, this was a testament to the power of Koji Kondo and Hirokazu Tanaka‘s work in creating the universal and timeless soundscape of Mario’s world. It’s so persuasive that it directly connects, and is immediately understandable, by anyone and everyone. Irrespective of whether or not they’re familiar with the franchise.
As for the Starter Course and its expansions, I would place them somewhere between the open ended play of LEGO Classic and the guided builds of their themed sets. Each one provides you with the materials and instructions to build the various elements you would find in Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom. From start pipes to goal poles and everything along the way. From Goombas and Boomer Bills to Lava Bubbles and Piranha Plants. You can then arrange them and rearrange them however you want, creating new courses and obstacles for Mario to navigate. Think of this as a physical version of Super Mario Maker.
I should mention that the build process with LEGO Super Mario is also somewhat different from what you’re used to. The only printed material included in the box is a quick start guide that will tell you how to piece Mario together and where to insert the two AAA batteries. After that, you will have to connect him via Bluetooth to your smartphone or tablet, download the free LEGO Super Mario app, and follow the instructions provided in their new digital manuals.
At first, it did feel a little weird not thumbing through the pages of an old-fashioned paper booklet. But these digital guides, where each step is rendered in beautiful 3D, where you can zoom in and rotate every object, are so intricate and detailed that I couldn’t help but wish I had them for some of the more complex builds I’ve embarked on.
What Nintendo and LEGO have accomplished with this Super Mario collection is really quite remarkable. They’ve managed to capture the charm of Mario, bottle it up, and reproduce it in a three inch plastic figurine. They’ve taken the concepts that drive the game and tried their best to recreate them in the real world.
The physical objects are great. They are beautifully rendered facsimiles of all the things we’ve seen on screen growing up. But what makes this truly great is the way they’ve used sound and music to enhance the otherwise traditional LEGO experience.
Now, I know that this isn’t a playset that’s targeted at adults. We aren’t necessarily predisposed to bishing, boshing, and pew-pewing with our toys anymore. When we indulge in LEGO, we don’t “play,” we call them “builds.” But let’s put aside all of that pretence and just bask in the delight of this thing that’s before us.
LEGO Super Mario may not have been made for me, but I know how it made me feel. So much so that every time I turned the little fella on, every time I heard him say “LEGO Mario time!”, it made me forget that that I was allegedly a grown-up. It reminded me, instead, to sit back, relax, and just let some joy into my life.
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