Lego Mario Channels Nintendo’s Toymaker Spirit

Video games may be Nintendo’s medium of choice, but the new Lego Mario sets delightfully demonstrate the company’s true priority: put play above all else.

By Jordan Minor

I finally got my hands on the very popular, very difficult to track down Super Mario Lego sets. I just have the starter course, no expansions and certainly no pricey NES recreations. Still, this toy packs more than enough pieces to show off what makes the concept so special, why it’s fun to make Mario run and jump across real-life Lego bricks. Beyond that, Lego Mario reminds us that Nintendo’s enduring presence in the video game industry isn’t just due to its games, but its larger philosophical commitment to play itself. Nintendo thrives by being a toymaker.

Brick Toad House

Whereas many Lego sets split their entertainment between building and admiring the finished work, Lego Mario’s gimmick hinges on the act of construction in a way I didn’t expect. First, you download the mobile app, which you then pair with the blocky, battery-powered Mario figurine via Bluetooth. Next, you follow instructions on the app to build a handful of discrete level chunks, not one unified static model. These chunks follow classic Mario themes like grass, water, and fire.

The eureka moment comes from realizing you’re free to rearrange these chunks however you want into a course. I like how the set looks like the midpoint between a Mario level and a Mario map screen. You can go with a conventional level, starting in safe grass before transitioning to spinning water platforms and a fiery Bower Jr. boss fight. But you really can just snap anything together in any order, and use special marker tiles to tell the Mario figure how to react. The modularity made me want to salvage my Lego Architecture Brandenburg Gate from the office.

Customizing your course also makes you much more invested in the interactive elements. This isn’t Super Mario Maker. Beyond a 60-second time limit that starts when you jump out of the pipe, stakes only exist in your mind. Hop on a Goomba forever and nothing will stop you. However, creating a course with an intended progression and flow encourages you to take it seriously, at least as seriously as you take your own imagination. When you do that, simple sound effects like collecting coins and reaching the flagpole become immensely convincing and satisfying. Just embrace play.

Toys Are Us

“Embrace play” might as well be Nintendo’s driving mantra. It’s not too far off from the (alleged) meaning of Nintendo’s name itself: “Leave Luck to Heaven.” And you barely even have to look at Nintendo’s history and roots to see how a commitment to play permeates so much of what the company does.

Besides Lego Mario, consider everything else celebrating the plumber’s 35th anniversary. Drive real-life Mario Kart in your spacious living room thanks to Velan Studios, or compete against 35 other players in a Mario battle royale. Nintendo used a toy Zapper gun as a Trojan horse to revive the console market with the NES. The same company used motion-control bowling to sell games to grandmas with the Wii. Just two years ago, Nintendo asked us to strap on homemade Nintendo Labo cardboard robot suits. More than a hundred years before video games even existed, Nintendo sold Hanafuda playing cards.

Along with Lego Mario, I’ve also been playing the recent Super Mario 3D All-Stars. I agree the collection itself could’ve used some more polish and attention, but the sheer quality of the barely updated games themselves (Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy at least) makes it hard to care. That quality comes from embracing play. It comes from giving Mario the perfect moves from navigating 3D playgrounds and expertly filling those playgrounds with things worth poking at. From backflipping to the top of a mountain to leaping around asteroids and into orbit, few games feature a core foundation of fun this rock-solid. Even as technology improves, that design consistency takes the spirit and artisanal craftsmanship of a legacy toymaker.

Putting Pieces Together

I talk about Nintendo a lot here, but I should say that Lego also brings a lot to the table. Turns out the company whose name means “Play Well” in Danish is a great partner for the people behind Mario. Along with a proven track record for finding fun ways to put blocks together, time and again Lego demonstrates a savvy ability to translate what makes its product so beloved into other forms, including technological ones.

Lego Mario finds creative ways to blend Lego and Mario concepts. The Lego video games combine gentle humor with mild, but fun, action-adventure to crank some of the least insulting licensed kids games. The Lego Movie filmmakers took a pitch that frankly didn’t work at all (a whole movie about Lego?) and still managed to create one of the most hilarious, gorgeous, and thematically transcendent animated movies of all time.

In case you thought these could all just be independent coincidences, years ago I interviewed folks who worked on Lego games and Lego movies to confirm that, yes, they do share knowledge, techniques, and event assets with each other. Early Lego games and early Lego film projects centered around another license, Star Wars, so both groups had a lot to talk about. And of course you don’t have to officially work for Lego to express your creativity through stop-motion Brickfilms or the free Lego Digital Designer 3D modeling software. Embrace play in your medium of choice.

Play Well

All the high-end specs and ugly boxes in the world can’t hide the fact that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X let you play fancier toys. That’s their function. So you might as well lean into that truth the way Nintendo does. That’s how you build Mario, a gaming franchise so enduring that not even an awful fever dream live-action movie or upcoming animated movie from the Minions studio can ruin it.

That’s not to say games shouldn’t also strive for artistic depth. We’ve yet to tap even a fraction of gaming’s potential for meaningful interactive experiences. But on some level most players just want to have fun, whether it’s with a controller or a handful of blocks.

Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.