Lego Mario is finally hear, but he does look a little…odd.
In collaborating with Nintendo, The Lego Group has decided that Lego Mario should not be
a traditional Lego minifugre, but instead a larger, chunkier figure with a built-in
screen.
While there’s no guarantee we won’t get a proper Mario minifigure in future, for now
Lego doesn’t want this to happen.
Why?
Because the classic Lego minifigure simply would be too small for all the electronics
they’ve jammed into Lego Mario.
Work on Lego Mario has taken five years from the point when Nintendo and Lego first started
talking about a collaboration.
The two companies felt that they had a lot in common, both producing creative products
aimed at helping families to play together.
Enter Lego design manager Jonathan Bennink, who was given the brief to create something
that combined Lego and Mario.
The brief was deliberately vague as to what this should be.
So, Jonathan and his team put together eight different pitches for how this collaboration
could work.
Six or seven of these pitches involved a digital-Lego hybrid approach, as the team agreed that this
would be essential to making something that reflected both Nintendo and Lego.
Indeed, Lego has been experimenting with this kind of play for several years.
The team had learned from the successes and pitfalls involved with the Toys to Life game
Lego Dimensions, as well as the similar Hidden Side Lego sets which connect to a smart phone.
In truth, Lego has been struggling for a few years to find the perfect technologically
savvy approach to toys.
While the company is one of the biggest toy manufacturers in the world, their sales have
been suffering in recent years as a result of the rise in smartphones and tablets.
A collaboration with Nintendo likely seemed like the perfect opportunity for Lego to learn
how to compete with their digital rivals.
The upper management at both Lego and Nintendo were shown these different design ideas, and
voted on which one they liked best.
They picked a Mario solution that had a small screen embedded in his front.
While the team had initially considered making Mario a traditional minifigure, there was
just one problem with this plan.
The screen technology simply wouldn’t fit inside a figure that small.
Said Jonathan: “The problem is the size of the technology,
he had to have batteries, and a display, and a speaker.
We tried different combinations of technology and to put it all in a minifigure was just
physically impossible, as you can imagine.”
Acclaimed Nintendo developer Takashi Tezuka said:
“First, we spent a long time examining the size and design of the Lego Mario figure.
Additionally, while Lego Mario will react based on the color sensor and take action
based on what is read, it is unable to read actions such as Mario’s traditional action
of hitting blocks from below.”
Once the direction for the collaboration had been voted on, both Nintendo and Lego went
away to create prototypes.
According to Jonathan, “Nintendo made a prototype because they are just really good
at all those digital devices with screens in it and they had a bunch of parts lying
around.”
The two companies compared notes to find a good balance between the classic Lego form,
and Nintendo’s understanding of how the technology inside should work.
Said Jonathan: “From there we decided that he needed to
be square, it is easier for the technology to fit in a square so you can make a smaller
figure, but also Lego bricks are generally square, the most iconic ones, so we felt it
made sense with Mario coming to Lego form if he is square.
Nintendo wanted us to make certain elements more organic like the cap because it is so
iconic.”
Then, once both Nintendo and Lego had agreed on Lego Mario’s appearance, Lego dropped
their prototype on the ground 5,000 times.
To test that it would definitely be sturdy enough to endure all kinds of play styles.
They sent the finished Mario prototype to Nintendo…who also dropped it on the ground
5,000 times to ensure that it was tough enough to sell.
Apparently both Lego and Nintendo have very similar standards when it comes to product
longevity(…JoyCon drift notwithstanding…).
So, Lego Mario was unveiled to the world, not as a minifigure, not as a computer game,
but as some kind of cross between the two.
It remains to be seen whether this approach actually proves popular in practice, but if
it does, it’s likely that we’ll see more similar products from Lego in future.
The moral of the story is that it’s good to learn from others.
Both Nintendo and Lego had specific skills and talents that they brought to this collaboration,
and the result is something that builds on their many combined strengths.