Lego Launches $200 Donkey Kong Arcade Machine with a New Design That Won Miyamoto's Approval

Renowned Lego designer Carl Merriam, known for his work on nostalgic concept sets such as the Lego Nintendo Game Boy and Piranha Plant, as well as contributions to the Lion Knights’ Castle, Galaxy Explorer, and Pirates of Barracuda Bay projects, is back with a brand-new creation.

This time, he helped the company create the $200 USD Donkey Kong arcade machine set, which successfully impressed Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary creator of Mario and Donkey Kong. Merriam shared that although he hasn't had the chance to meet Miyamoto in person, he was informed that Miyamoto is very happy with this design.

While the set cannot fully play the original Donkey Kong game—meaning the Jumpman character (Mario's original name at the time) cannot climb up to the top on his own—it does come with functional basic gameplay systems similar to Lego's $230 pinball table set. It includes a joystick lever to shift the Jumpman character slightly left and right, a button to make him jump, and a crank to endlessly roll barrels down.

Regarding the wooden barrels that roll down, Merriam confirmed they are the exact same original barrel pieces Lego first produced back in 1989 for the early pirate sets, which he considers his favorite pieces in this set. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to make these barrels roll down at the right speed without getting stuck. Merriam noted that he had to test rolling barrels down the tracks thousands of times to find the sweet spot. Additionally, Nintendo had only one special request: to make the poison barrels heavier than regular ones. The team solved this by hiding minifigure heads inside those barrels.

Diving into the mechanics behind the internal system, Merriam explained in detail that the barrel system works similarly to a water pump, using a stack of 14 barrels lined up along the side of the model. When the crank is pulled, it feeds a barrel into the very bottom and causes the ones above to fall. This system supports a total of 20 barrels, allowing up to 6 barrels to roll down the tracks simultaneously. Once the barrels reach the bottom, they drop into a storage bin connected to the barrel pump, creating an infinite recirculation loop that provides continuous playful entertainment.

Source: The Verge