{"id":179037,"date":"2025-10-04T14:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/179037\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T14:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:50:12","slug":"the-designers-share-all-the-secrets-to-the-fun-nostalgic-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/179037\/","title":{"rendered":"The Designers Share All the Secrets to the Fun, Nostalgic Set"},"content":{"rendered":"

I owe the original Game Boy everything. Had it not been for Nintendo\u2019s gray brick of a handheld, and a copy of Super Mario Land, I doubt I would be writing these words on Gizmodo. It was the gadget that started my lifelong obsession with cutting-edge technology and my passion for sharing it with others. So excuse me for being overwhelmed with emotion and nostalgia when Lego announced<\/a> it was making a 421-piece brick set version of the iconic Nintendo handheld.<\/p>\n

Released on Oct. 1 for $60, the Lego Game Boy is a pretty easy build. Lego says it\u2019s for ages 18+ and up, but there was nothing complicated enough that a 10-year-old couldn\u2019t follow the instructions. (Though, they wouldn\u2019t have any nostalgia for the handheld that came out in 1989.) It took me about 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete, but I think it would have taken under an hour if I hadn\u2019t stopped to shoot B-roll for a social video. (It\u2019s all fun and games building Lego sets after work; this is also work for me.)<\/p>\n

Lego Game Boy<\/p>\n

Lego’s Nintendo Game Boy is easily one of the most fun brick sets of the year.<\/p>\n

Easy to build Pressable buttons, wheels, and switches Nearly 1:1 replica Includes lenticular screens and Game Paks Affordable Building it is over too soon <\/p>\n

As I noted in my hands-on<\/a> a few weeks earlier, the Lego Game Boy is more than just a charming\u2014and almost 1:1 replica\u2014display piece. In addition to the pressable buttons, scrollable dials, and the slideable power switch, you can also pop in brick versions of Super Mario Land and The Legend of Zelda: Link\u2019s Awakening game cartridges into the Lego Game Boy. Remove the back cover and you get access to swap in three different lenticular screens featuring the two games and the Game Boy\u2019s famous bootup screen featuring the Nintendo logo sliding down.<\/p>\n

@raywongtech<\/a> <\/p>\n

The Lego Game Boy is so freaking cool! Check out my review and interview with Lego Senior Designer Carl Merriam and Design Director Simon Kent, who worked on the 421-piece Lego Game Boy set to learn how they developed it from start to finish. There\u2019s so much that went into designing not just how it looks on the outside, but the inside too. Like the way the buttons and switches work, the brickified circuit boards inside the Game Paks, and more. Also, will there be Lego SNES, N64, and more sets? #lego<\/a> #nintendo<\/a> #gameboy<\/a> #foryou<\/a> #toys<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u266c original sound \u2013 raywongtech<\/a> <\/p>\n

There are tons of Easter eggs inside the Lego Game Boy that make it more than just a skin-deep recreation. I spoke with Carl Merriam, a senior designer at the Lego Group, and Simon Kent, a design director at the Lego Group, who worked on the Lego Game Boy set to unearth some of its unseen secrets.<\/p>\n

Designing the Lego Game Boy \"Lego\u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

There\u2019s been some strongly worded opinions about which company gets credit for the Lego Game Boy. Is it Lego or is it Nintendo? The answer is both\u2014as it should be. Nintendo is famous for being extremely protective of its IP\u2014its products, franchises, and characters are well-guarded and require top-level approval. To do a Lego version of the Game Boy, Merriam and Kent had to go beyond just the outer gray shell and pink buttons.<\/p>\n

\u201cNintendo was very involved,\u201d Kent, who\u2019s been at Lego for almost 20 years, told Gizmodo. \u201cWe have a team that works in Japan\u2026 they basically allow us to connect to different IP teams or hardware teams or even creative teams within Nintendo to get the right information to make the product as best as it can be. We also met with the hardware designer that I think may have worked on the original or certainly was connected to the original [Game Boy].\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Lego<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tThe Lego Game Boy next to my original Game Boy from 1993. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Lego<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tThe top of the Lego Game Boy versus the OG handheld. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Lego<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tEven the backsides are replicated well. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Lego<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tThe gray is a little darker than the original. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t <\/p>\n

Merriam, a senior designer who\u2019s been at Lego for 12 years, started as a fan before landing at the toy company. He\u2019s worked on Lego sets, including Boost, Minecraft, and Super Mario, to name a few popular series. For the Game Boy, which he says took around a year from concept to development, the team went through 10 to 20 iterations before landing on the final design and tweaking it to feel extra special, extra Nintendo-y.<\/p>\n

The dimensions of the Game Boy proved to be restrictive in what Lego could do, but in the end, I would say it\u2019s semi-faithful to the actual handheld, which has to be commended.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really have a lot of room in here to do a lot of stuff, and we played around with all kinds of different functional ways to make you be able to do something with the games,\u201d Merriam told Gizmodo. \u201cIt turned out that the one thing that we could achieve all over the entire thing was making all of the buttons have the same haptic feedback as the actual device, or as close as we can get in Lego bricks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LegoThere are so many nice parts to the inside of the Lego Game Boy. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

He said each area of the Lego Game Boy was a design challenge on its own. Merriam says he probably built 30 to 40 versions for the way the D-pad, buttons, and switches. I noticed that attention to detail as I built the Lego set. Behind the D-pad is actually a little rubber piece that gives it a springiness when you press into it. Same goes for the A and B buttons; those are actually minifig hats painted pink, and there\u2019s a little rubber band behind them that gives them a familiar button travel when pressed. The start and select buttons are black tire pieces changed to gray, and they date back to 1969, Kent told me. Comparing the Lego Game Boy controls with my original Game Boy that my mom bought in 1993, I gotta say it\u2019s impressive how hard Lego went to replicate it.<\/p>\n

\"LegoThat rubber band provides the A and B buttons with a springiness when pressed. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

I asked how they approached building the Lego Game Boy\u2014did they 3D model it first or just get right to building? How do you even go about choosing the pieces, though? It\u2019s estimated that there are tens of thousands of unique Lego pieces available to use. With an entire vault going back almost 70 years to select from, where do you even start? Sure, Lego could\u2014and it did\u2014create a few new, custom parts for the Game Boy, but where\u2019s the creativity in making many new parts?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mind is built of the Lego system, so whenever I see anything in the real world, I see a Lego piece that maybe could be that thing,\u201d Merriam said. He explained to me how the clear panel for the Lego Game Boy screen is actually a window frame that\u2019s \u201cquite an old piece,\u201d and it was a good problem to have to design it so that it would be centered properly.<\/p>\n

\"LegoYou can pop in three included lenticular screens to bring the Lego Game Boy to life. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

As for the custom pieces\u2026 well, you could try to find out which one it is, or I could just tell you. It involves one of the corners of the Lego Game Boy.<\/p>\n

\"LegoThe buttons are all pressable. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to sort of incorporate everything that was mobile about the Game Boy,\u201d added Kent. \u201cWe had discussions\u2014should we do any peripherals that can plug into it? Should it come with some headphones? Should it come with a little light [like the Game Boy Light Magnifier]? But, in the end, we wanted to keep it simple and focused very much on\u2026 taking their favorite games and playing them anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Lego<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tThe two Lego Game Paks sandwiching a real copy of \u2018Tetris.\u2019 \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Lego<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tSorry, real Game Boy games don\u2019t fit inside of the Lego Game Boy slot. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t <\/p>\n

Speaking of games, the insides of the cartridges, or Game Paks as they\u2019re officially called, were something that came later on in the process, after they finished making the outer case and making sure all the functions worked. In the Zelda game cart, there\u2019s a \u201csave battery\u201d piece that replicates the way Game Paks preserved your game progress.<\/p>\n

\"LegoThe Zelda cartridge has a save battery piece inside. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

One burning question I had to ask the two was what the joint\/kickstand-like piece that keeps the lenticular screens in place is called. \u201cI call it a dingler, I don\u2019t have a technical term for it,\u201d Merriam told me. So there you have it, it\u2019s unofficially called a dingler!<\/p>\n

\"LegoThat thing holding the lenticular screens in place is unofficially called a \u201cdingler,\u201d according to Clark Merriam. At least that\u2019s what he calls it. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo More Lego Nintendo consoles coming? <\/p>\n

The Game Boy is the second Nintendo console that Lego brickified. The first was the Lego NES set released in 2020<\/a>. That set was larger, had more pieces, and was more expensive. Kent says the Lego Game Boy was an attempt at a Nintendo set that\u2019s more affordable.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, the team in general has wanted to do the Game Boy, and we felt that now was probably the right time, and we also wanted to explore a different price point,\u201d Kent said. \u201cObviously, the NES came with a TV. It\u2019s a higher price point, so we wanted to do something smaller to test that area.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lego\u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

I tried to get Merriam and Kent to tell me whether there are more Lego Nintendo consoles on the way, but they wouldn\u2019t let anything slip. So if you\u2019re waiting for a Lego SNES, N64, or GameCube, you\u2019ll just have to keep waiting.<\/p>\n

Pure joy and fun \"Lego\u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

When I first saw the Lego Game Boy, I was both excited and curious to see how it would differ from the many fan creations out there. I was surprised\u2014or maybe I shouldn\u2019t have been\u2014that Merriam and Kent didn\u2019t look at the fan creations out there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you search for anything related to intellectual property, there\u2019s probably a Lego version of it out there somewhere,\u201d Kent said. \u201cWe are very careful for that exact reason. We deliberately don\u2019t look at fan-related material because we want to focus on the actual real thing and do what we think is the right thing with the partner who we are collaborating with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most interesting differences between being a Lego fan and the Lego designer is that we\u2019re designing a product for people to build at home, and to make the experience of building the product fun is a totally different challenge than just making something look like the source material,\u201d said Merriam.<\/p>\n

\"LegoThe lenticular screens for the two included games. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

At the end of the day, the Lego Game Boy\u2014or any Lego set, really\u2014should be fun to build. Yes, I often speed build Lego sets, but that usually comes at the expense of enjoying all the care that went into designing not just how the completed build looks on the outside, but the inside.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s honestly not much to dislike about the Lego Game Boy set. If there\u2019s anything to nitpick, it\u2019s that the transparent screen was a little scuffed out of the box, and I wish the lenticular cards were more visible. But then again, the original Game Boy\u2019s monochromatic green screen was a pain to look at from any angle other than dead center, too. For a weekend build that only costs $60, this is the most fun you\u2019ll have in a long time, especially if you\u2019ve got any nostalgia for the Game Boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lego system is like a language,\u201d Merriam said. \u201cI like to try to write poetry with the Lego system. Every once in a while, I can achieve it, and I believe I\u2019ve achieved it in this one.\u201d<\/p>\n