Greetings, and welcome to an LGR assembly thing.
And today, we've got this thing right here.
This is the Retro Power Retro Bricks
Nintendo Entertainment System-style model.
Really, it's a case meant for use
with Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 computers.
I've put together a few
of these kinds of Lego models here on LGR.
And everybody was always saying, "Oh man, it'd be so cool
"if those fit, like, a Raspberry Pi inside."
Well, this one does.
In fact, this is only one of several, sold by Retro Power
on places like Amazon.
At the moment, it costs $26 for just the model itself,
and $36 for this one you're seeing here,
with two USB NES-style controllers.
But, if you saw my unboxing recently,
you'll know that this was actually sent to me
from the company.
They know I was interested in these kind of things,
having seen my previous videos,
so they hooked me up with a few models, no strings attached.
And you know, I can do whatever I want with 'em.
And what I wanna do, is put them together,
so that's what we're gonna do.
So throughout this video, we're going to unbox the thing,
assemble it, get the Raspberry Pi set up with it,
and try out these controllers,
and see how it all works together.
And the first step in the process,
is cuttin' the thing open.
So let's get to it.
(mellow music)
(cardboard snapping)
All right, so inside, it pretty much,
it looks like a Lego kit, though it's not a Lego kit.
In fact, you're not gonna see Lego or Nintendo
or any brands like that on here, because it's not.
It is, however, compatible with Lego system parts
and these pretty much look like NES controllers, to me.
The grayish color of the plastic shell
is a little bit off, it's a little more beige
than I think it should be.
But other than that, I mean, it feels pretty spot on.
It does feel a little bit lighter weight
perhaps a little bit cheaper,
and I don't doubt that they are.
I don't expect them to be top notch.
However, this instruction booklet is pretty impressive.
Just for the fact that it exists!
I've had a bunch of
these third-party, Lego-style kits, in the past,
and a lot of them don't actually come
with a physical instruction booklet like this.
Usually it's just a PDF download
from their website, or something.
This one does come with a physical book,
and I appreciate that.
And honestly, it looks pretty good on first inspection.
So, all right, we've got six plastic bags here
full of all sorts of lovely looking parts.
And it's my standard fare to just undo everything
and put it in a big pile
and then separate them all out by color,
and vaguely by size, and stuff like that.
Just so I can quickly-ish, see what I'm doing,
when I'm gonna be going through
the instructions, step-by-step.
And no, I'm not gonna be showing every bit
of this assembly process.
That would take, oh, I don't know,
I think it took me like 45 minutes
to actually do all of this.
I'm just gonna cut it up this time around.
But yeah, all together, there are 30 steps
in the instruction manual.
And the first one here, really is just putting together
the base of the thing.
Which, man, it looks a Lego kind of project,
so that's typical.
And immediately, I'm realizing
that it is actually gonna end up being
a little bit larger than I expected it to be.
Not that it's a bad thing (chuckles)
it's just that all of my other Raspberry Pi 3 cases
have been much smaller.
Like this is about twice as large
as any of my other Pi cases.
You know, just something that I notice right off the bat.
Anyway, once this first part is going,
we've got a bunch of these,
lots of long, thin, structural buildup, kind of pieces.
And really, for the first 10 or so steps,
that's all we're gonna be doing.
Yeah, step four is just
more structural integrity type of stuff,
building up quite a bit in the middle,
which is good to see.
Because again, this is much larger
than the actual Raspberry Pi,
so I'm assuming a lot of this is just structural.
Once I got to step five though,
there is this little bit here that's supposed to mimic
the LED, the red power display, from the NES,
in the bottom left there.
I thought that was kinda nice.
It doesn't actually light up or anything,
but, you know, it looks the part.
Same with the power and reset button
that go to the right of that.
But, then over there,
in the bottom right of the front of the system, well,
when it's all said and done,
there was supposed to be
these two little black tall pieces here,
that are gonna go in with those little connector bits.
That's supposed to mimic where the controllers would go
on the real NES.
However, two of the black pieces
they just weren't here at all!
And I went through and looked through all the footage.
You know, double-checked, triple-checked everything.
Went through all the bags, and boxes,
and packaging and everything, all over again.
I spent about five or six minutes looking
and nope, they just were not included.
And, you know, I just got in touch with the manufacturer
and said, hey, there's an issue.
And they're like, "Oh, crap, we can send extra parts."
Anyway, we'll address that later on.
Step six is just flipping the thing around
and doing a whole lot more structural stuff.
And then in the back rear (chuckling),
I like this little touch.
I just like any of these little touches like this,
that make it look like the real thing, to some degree.
And this section right here,
this is where the power connector would go,
which continues on to step seven.
You have the little round cylindrical piece right there
that looks like the AV output, or, you know,
the RF connection.
Continuing on to the next step
where the right-hand side of the unit,
you get the little red and yellow,
for the RCA connectors, right there (chuckling).
I don't know, these little things amuse me.
Like I loved building the Apple II and the IBM PC,
for all the little internal components
that you just will never see, in expansion cards,
and microprocessors and stuff.
This one, unfortunately, doesn't have anything like that.
It really is, again, the main idea
is to just hold a Raspberry Pi.
So you get a nice flat surface here,
that we're putting together, right in the middle,
followed by some more structural stuff
to build up the secondary gray,
like the lighter gray color that goes on top.
And yeah, that's at this point,
we start getting to some of the flat pieces.
And this is where the Raspberry Pi itself,
is going to sit, when all is said and done, which is smart.
I'm glad they didn't end up going
with all of the little round bits on top,
and ended up with completely flat pieces.
That way, the Raspberry Pi just slides right in
and nothing on the bottom of the board
is gonna stick on anything.
But yeah, these next three or four steps,
it really is just more of the same.
Lots of structural supports in places,
to snugly fit the Raspberry Pi
in the left of the unit there.
And effectively, the Raspberry Pi is gonna be going into
what would be the cartridge slot of the NES.
Which I thought was interesting placement.
I kind of expected it to be around back
so that like, you know, cords would be coming out
the proper spot, or something.
But, no, I guess they did it this way
because, well, as you can see here,
let's just go ahead and get the Raspberry Pi.
This is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.
And yes, this is the same unit that I used
for my building a better PlayStation Classic video,
a little while back.
The way this just slides into the NES here,
we're actually gonna be building around it.
So you do have to insert it on step 16,
about halfway through the build process.
This is why I'm assuming
that it's in the cartridge slot position.
The USB ports are gonna be sticking out the front.
But yeah, now that we've got the Raspberry Pi in there,
we're just gonna be, like I said,
building around it (chuckling),
and just putting all sorts of long pieces
and slats and supports, and stuff like that, on top of it
and around to the front of it.
So yeah, once it's in there, it's in there (chuckling).
It's held very tightly.
I'm kind of not the biggest fan of this, to be honest,
because well, for one thing, you can't access the SD card.
You know, the microSD is in the back,
facing the back of this little NES model,
when everything is done.
Which means that you will
have to slightly disassemble this thing,
if you ever wanna take the Pi out of there,
or access the SD card.
Now I pretty much never have to do that,
I just use USB and WiFi functionality
to, you know, do things
like transfer ROMs and all of that stuff.
But yeah, this was just a different design
than I anticipated that it would be
when I first was looking at the box art,
and all that kind of stuff.
You know, the cords coming out of the left-hand side
of the NES, USB out the front,
and no access for the SD card.
Anyway, at this point, I mean, we're pretty much done.
It's, we're, you know, just feeding through
a whole bunch of this nonsense (chuckling)
'cause it really is just more of the same.
All the supports are in place.
We're just gonna be having
some of these little joint hinge pieces here.
And this is gonna be where the cartridge slot door
is going to connect to.
And then there's the top of the unit itself,
which, ha ha, I really like the way
that they put this together.
Like on the right-hand side of the top of the actual NES,
you have all of those little vents.
Well they use these little slat pieces, 16 of them,
to mimic that aesthetic,
and (chuckling) it looks pretty good!
And combined with all of the really flat, smooth pieces,
yeah, it's a convincing NES aesthetic.
And the last five steps of this assembly project
consist of just putting together, the actual door itself
to go in front of the cartridge slot,
or really, in this case, in front of the Raspberry Pi.
So, yeah, it's just a combination of some long pieces,
some little L-shaped pieces, and more of those connectors,
to snap into the hinges on the top front,
of the unit itself.
And once we get that into place (plastic clicking), voila,
we've got a Lego, not Lego, NES, not NES (chuckling),
for a Raspberry Pi 3.
I guess if you wanted,
you could add like actual Nintendo stickers.
It doesn't come with those, obviously,
but it does come with these retro power decals,
if you wanted to add those.
I did not.
And check it out (chuckling)!
I think this is a very smart-looking little unit.
The proportions are a bit exaggerated, all the way around,
but overall, it looks pretty darn neat.
Unfortunate though,
that it was missing those two black pieces
that go right there,
where the controller ports would be, on the real thing.
Again though, not a big deal.
They said they could send me replacements parts, no problem.
And I had a couple of extra lying around
because, who doesn't (chuckling)?
In fact, I think these are gonna be
the actual only, official, Lego pieces in this entire build.
But, you know, it blends together just fine.
And there you go, we have
a completed Nintendo Entertainment System, Lego-style case.
Yeah!
Oh, and just for a comparison in terms of size,
and I guess color, and aesthetic, and what not,
here is the official NES classic mini-console.
This is kind of more of the size that I was expecting
when I first saw this product.
And really, a Raspberry Pi could fit in there,
it's small enough.
So you know, I guess they really wanted
to do extra, larger looking features,
to make it look a little more correct
in the functional cartridge slot, and all that kinda stuff.
Anyway, decisions were made.
Well yeah, let's just go ahead
and get this thing plugged up.
So we got a HDMI going into the side here.
Again, kind of odd placement.
An official Raspberry Pi power supply,
they go into the side here, as well.
And it does leave the AV output on the side there,
so if you wanted to hook this up through a composite,
you can do that.
And then, yeah, opening the cartridge slot, so to speak,
and you can plug in whatever you really want to.
So, it has access to even that,
in the four USB ports right there.
So, got the controller plugged in.
Then, yeah, let's turn the thing on and get it set up.
So yeah, as established in my previous video
on the Raspberry Pi things, I'm using retro Pi here.
There are lot of options for things like this,
but that's what I'm using here.
And this is the gamepad configuration.
Super easy, and of course, it plays perfectly fine
because it's a Raspberry Pi 3,
with good emulation and all that good stuff.
The main thing that I really wanted to test out,
in this section anyway, is the Retro Power controller.
Because I know that they've sold
a bunch of different controllers
on Amazon, for some time now.
I've seen these pop up on my recommended shopping lists
and places, on the internet.
Where it was just like, eww, you like retro games,
you should buy one of these.
But I never did, I've never been
into getting like clone versions of classic controllers.
I just prefer to use the actual classic controller
and an adapter, or something.
But, I was surprised.
I mean, this one feels pretty darn good.
Again, it doesn't feel 100% right.
Like the materials are different,
it is a little bit lighter weight,
and like the buttons, they just, I don't know,
they don't have exactly the right feel.
Like even a slight difference, feels bizarre.
It's mostly the weight that gets to me.
Like the inputs themselves, they're fine.
Like I had no problems playing anything.
It was just the whole fact,
that it was a bit lighter weight.
And as such, felt quote, unquote, cheaper.
But you know, considering this entire kit costs 36 bucks
and comes with two controllers.
So you know, I could play Mario and yeah,
I could play the new recently (chuckling) released
SimCity prototype for the NES.
Yeah, that's a thing I was super excited
to see that that finally saw the light of day.
There's always been talk about it.
I've seen screen shots, and I remember seeing it
in magazines and stuff, back in the day,
so to actually finally be able to play this,
is just awesome.
Huge thanks to Frank,
over at the Video Game History Foundation,
for getting this out there.
And yeah, now I can play it
on my newly put together (chuckling) NES,
not an NES, console,
just a Raspberry Pi in a Lego case.
But you know, I don't know, there's something appealing
about having a Lego case with a Raspberry Pi.
I've had a few of those now.
Again, it's a little bit larger than anticipated,
but then again, I guess I'm just charmed
by the little details.
Like the fake ports and the moving door on front.
You know, it doesn't have to limited
to NES, or Famicom, or anything like that,
because it's got a ton of things.
You wanna play Sega Master System games on here, go for it.
Eight bit Sonic the Hedgehog 2,
is just waiting for you to dive in.
I know that this same company
sells Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version,
also a Super Nintendo.
I've seen a ton of companies making
these console-shaped Lego projects for Raspberry Pi cases.
Maybe someone has done a Master System one, by now.
But anyway, I am absolutely just rambling,
at this point (chuckling).
I am on a lot of caffeine.
Right, so that is the Retro Brick Raspberry Pi case,
all 307 bricks worth, with the USB controllers,
which are actually pretty decent,
considering how cheap I assume they are.
Now, yeah, that's it for this episode of LGR.
This is not sponsored or anything like that.
I was just, I got this thing, it was cool,
and I wanted to try a new case on a Raspberry Pi,
and here it is.
I don't getting anything for recommending it,
so, you know, I guess I kinda recommend it (chuckling)
If you want it, cool! If not, whatever.
Hopefully at least this was fun to watch.
And as always, thank you for watching!