Summary
- Lego’s Game Boy is an incredibly detailed, faithful recreation with working D-Pad, buttons, knobs, and internal details.
- It’s surprisingly affordable at $60, offering far better value than recent nostalgic Lego sets.
- The Lego Game Boy is a highly intricate build that can sometimes be fiddly.
I’m a sucker for millennial nostalgia bait, and as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t get much better than a throwback Lego set. Usually these sets have an equally “adult,” often unfair, price tag. Remember the $250 Legend of Zelda Great Deku Tree or the $290 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)? Both sets are cool, but they don’t feel like $250- $300 cool.
For some reason, that’s not the case with Lego’s intricate new Game Boy set and its surprisingly reasonable $60 USD/$80 CAD price tag. Impulse purchase pricing aside, this thing is incredibly cool. Coming in at nearly the same size as Nintendo’s classic 1989-release original Game Boy, the number of subtle details this Lego masterpiece features is staggering. While I like Lego’s NES set, it always felt a bit odd that it isn’t the same size as the original classic console.
There’s a working D-Pad, A/B buttons, Select/Start, and even knobs that actually spin for the volume and contrast. Diving in deeper with some of the less obvious details (and without giving too much away), there’s even special attention paid to the iconic handheld’s internals, including its internal speaker and various other chips.
The set includes two cartridges (that also feature fun details like Lego transistors and batteries if you pop the cover off), and holographic inserts for The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Super Mario Land, and the Game Boy’s very recognizable panning startup screen that simply says “Nintendo.”
Every time I pick up the Lego Game Boy, I notice a new detail
This is one of the most intricate sets I’ve built
The Game Boy building process can get a little frustrating at times given all the precise detail, especially when slotting in internal pieces that don’t always immediately make sense. I forgot to add the elastic band behind the A and B button (it makes the buttons pop a bit), and had to take a section of the Lego Game Boy apart to access it. Lining up the label stickers for the cartridges was also a bit finicky, but if you have experience with applying Lego stickers, you won’t have any issues.
The key draw with the Lego Game Boy is the level of accuracy. Take a look at how it compares to my childhood Game Boy in the photos. There’s speaker grills, the recognizable dot matrix with stereo sound label, and a headphone jack slot, all custom-printed for this particular set. There’s even a product number on the back. It’s truly wild how close Lego was able to get its Game Boy creation to looking like an actual classic Game Boy.
I can’t help but wish it came in different colors, mainly because my childhood Game Boy is yellow. That’s a minor gripe, though — this is by far one of the best Lego sets I’ve ever built, especially when you consider its price.
