The first Lego Mario sets arrive in August and include a $100 Bowser’s Castle
Plus $60 Starter Course required
Lego has announced that the first Lego Super Mario sets will release in August.
Revealed last month, the special interactive Lego Mario sets see players collecting coins and defeating enemies in real-life ‘levels’. Lego Mario himself features LCD screens and a speaker to interact with the brick courses.
Lego confirmed on Tuesday that the first set in the range will be the Mario Starter Course, which will retail for 59.99 EUR/USD and 49.99 GBP.
According to Lego’s announcement the set will release globally on August 1, however Lego Mario’s store page currently displays an August 10 date for Europe.
The Starter Course is required to unlock further expansion sets, which were also revealed on Tuesday, including the Piranha Plant Power Slide (29.99 USD/EUR) and Bowser’s Castle Boss Battle (99.99 USD/EUR).
The range will release alongside a free Lego Super Mario app, which will keep track of scores to encourage continuous rebuilding, as well as provide digital building instructions with zoom and rotate viewing tools.
Lego hopes to have a “long and fruitful” relationship with Nintendo and its IPs.
That’s according to the set’s design manager Jonathan Bennink, who suggested in a Brothers Brick interview that the toy firm will likely explore other Nintendo franchises in the future.
Nintendo producer Takashi Tezuka said in a prepared statement on Tuesday: “Super Mario has continued to appear, always in a form adapted to the current hardware of the time.
“I am thankful that in this project with the LEGO Group, Mario is jumping out of the digital world of game consoles and smart devices, and we are able to bring him into the world with a new, physical type of Mario play.
“It’s very exciting to think of LEGO Mario becoming a real friend to children and to picture them playing in their very own Mario world that they imagined themselves.”
As first revealed by VGC last month, Nintendo is planning to celebrate Super Mario Bros.’ 35th anniversary this year with several major releases, new and old.
As part of its anniversary celebrations, Nintendo will reveal plans to re-release most of Super Mario’s 35-year back catalogue this year, remastered for Nintendo Switch, VGC was told, including 1996’s Super Mario 64, 2002’s Super Mario Sunshine and 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy.
