We’ve already been chatting excitedly about Lego’s very lovely Game Boy set. It’s absolutely one of the best things they’ve put out in a while and, to celebrate the launch, two of Lego’s designers, Carl Merriam and Simon Kent, have been chatting with those fine folks over at Gizmodo about the process of recreating an iconic piece of gaming history.
Now, we can tell you that the most exciting thing about the Lego Game Boy is just how close it manages to get to the look, feel, and weight of the original console just right. In fact, it gets them so right that someone has already modded the thing to play actual Game Boy games.
It really does hit all those nostalgia buttons, and in order to get it so close to the OG, the designers say they worked closely with Nintendo itself throughout development. “Nintendo was very involved,” explained Lego design director Kent:
“We have a team that works in Japan… 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.”
With Nintendo’s seal of approval, and with input from someone who was seemingly connected to the design of the original (the Game Boy’s original designer, Gunpei Yokoi passed away in 1997), the next challenge for the team behind the set was just how little room they had to work with if they wanted to keep the 1:1 scale – which, of course, was essential.
“We don’t really have a lot of room 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,” Merriam, who’s also worked on Super Mario Lego sets, told Gizmodo.
For what little room they did have — and it’s one of the best things about the build as you make your way through its five bags — they certainly got down to some ingenious designing. With little touches such as how the D-Pad sits on a rubber piece to give it a perfect bouncy and responsive feel, or how the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons have been set to feel exactly like those on the console. Nevermind the fact that they’re shoehorned in some awesome lenticular screens and carts that “click” in exactly the right way when you insert them into the back.
Indeed, with this in mind, Mirriam says that he designed some 30 to 40 of the D-Pad and various switches to work on how they felt. Oh, and those Start and Select buttons? They’re Lego tyres from all the way back in the 1960s!
As good as the finished product is, it’s also revealed that there were discussions about adding more, as Kent continues:
“We wanted to sort of incorporate everything that was mobile about the Game Boy…We had discussions on whether we should add any peripherals that can plug into it. Should it come with some headphones? Should it come with a little light? But, in the end, we wanted to keep it simple and focused very much on… taking fans’ favourite games and playing them anywhere.”
In discussing how to work on the company’s second shot at a Nintendo console (after the superb NES set in 2020) without being influenced by the endless fan-made versions of the Game Boy in Lego that are already out there and online, Kent said that:
“If you search for anything related to intellectual property, there’s probably a Lego version of it out there somewhere…we are very careful for that exact reason. We deliberately don’t 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.”
Merriam adds that, “One of the most interesting differences between being a Lego fan and the Lego designer is that we’re 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.” Indeed.
Pushed on whether there were any further Nintendo consoles or sets en route, neither designer gave up any details, but on the strength of both this and the NES console set, we can’t wait to see what comes next.
Have you picked up the Lego Game Boy? Happy with it? Make sure to let us know what you think!
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