To say that this theme has been controversial would probably be an understatement. What many assumed would be a simple, easy, almost free money for Lego and Nintendo theme quickly turned into quite the debate. "Too many specific pieces", "The electronics are unnecessary", "It's going to look awful to display", "It's too expensive for what you're getting" (though that last one is justified), "Why can't it just be a normal Lego set?". Hopes for Minifig scale display sets like Peach's castle were quickly dashed by the reveal, and many weren't happy. Me? I honestly had a feeling something like this would happen. This is a Nintendo collaboration after all. When have those made sense? I could see why people weren't liking the look of it though, but now that this is out, were those criticisms justified? At time of writing, right now I only have the Adventures with Mario set, the set you need to get the most out of the theme, and will from this point out be referred to as the "Starter course". There are some things I can bring up about the rest of the wave in terms of criticisms (I'm not personally a fan of how they handled the powerups for example), but until I can get some first-hand experience, the bulk of this review is going to be focused on the Starter course.
Right off the bat, one of the biggest issues that people are going to have is the simplicity of the builds and the execution of how to do them. Except for the smaller sets like the Power Up packs, instructions for the theme are tied to the Lego Super Mario App, an app used to update Mario himself, track what sets you have, what courses you've built, records you have in those courses, and how to build and use the functions of the sets. While I get the need for the tutorials to explain things like how Mario works, and how to defeat the enemies, one of the big issues I have with it is the drip-fed instruction method, something that doesn't need to happen for things like building the terrain and static structures. It could have been compressed, but instead, you get separate instructions for building things like the small hill, medium hill, large hill, the flowers, stuff that most people could look at a picture and go "Oh, I can do that, easy!". One thing I appreciate from Lego is the balance between simplicity and complexity, where even the hardest of builds can be built in an easy to understand way. This, however, leans too heavily towards the simplicity that I think will come off as patronizing towards more experienced builders, regardless of age.
To look at Lego Mario himself for a moment, I actually quite like him in terms of design. He's significantly bigger than a Minifig, but I think the bigger size helps with making the other Mario characters. Though he suffers from similar issues regarding Lego characters, in that they don't seem to want to improve on the minifig's articulation when making larger figures, the style itself is a nice mix of Lego and Super Mario, to the point that Mario himself looks more like a Lego Brick dressed as Mario, which in itself has a certain charm to it. With the electronics off though, Mario does look quite dead, thanks to the use of a screen to represent his eyes, mouth, and a portion on his chest that shows what Mario is standing on and what he gets in-game, along with showing how much time is left in a level. Thanks to a sensor between Mario's legs, Mario can read the colour of the floor, along with special tiles with pre-applied stickers which allows Mario to interact with enemies, obstacles, and objects such as the Question Mark Blocks, which can give one of a random selection of powers and coins.
If there is one thing I can't fault the theme for so far, it's the characters. from what I've seen and experienced, the builds for the characters are a nice mix of aesthetics for the most part (jury is still out on King Boo). Included in the Starter course though, you get Bowser Jr and a Goomba. While I would have liked it if the front and back of the Goomba was using the same pieces as the sides, it is a walking mushroom, after all, the printed face for the Goomba looks quite good. Bowser Jr., on the other hand, looks great. I could definitely see them reusing the building style for a set of Koopalings, and maybe even some Koopa Kids (though that might be because Mario Party has been a reoccurring thing in this house during lockdown). It would have been nice if the starter course could have come with another buildable character of some sort, but the selection itself is very nice. Thanks to those blind bags, I can see people who are into the theme army building the characters there or just collecting them without going hard into the line as these minion builds seem to be fun little builds.
It's hard to recommend this to adult collectors. On its own, this does not work in terms of display, and many may find the unique parts hard to use in their own creations. Unlike other licenced themes, based on what I've seen of the rest of the wave via reviews and pictures, along with my experiences with the starter course, this doesn't have much of an appeal to those who don't have any attachments to Super Mario, at least when comparing it to other licenced themes that can entice people with other factors like interesting builds. None of this is to say though that Lego Super Mario has no appeal outside of Mario fans, because there is one thing to this that I'm not seeing a lot of people bring up. Though many have compared the theme to the recent Super Mario Maker games, two creation games all about creating Mario Levels in different 2D Mario aesthetics, I'd like to go one step further and say that Lego Super Mario is a board game version of Super Mario Maker, or at least has the potential to be.
One thing that Lego has the potential to be (well, one of many), is a great way to develop and play board games, something that the ill-fated Lego Games (not the video games) tried to be, but I think missed the mark by not really highlighting the versatility of the materials. A single Lego brick can be anything. Literally, anything you could imagine, you can make out of Lego. Kids have used Lego to tell fantastical stories, of heroic knights, of explorers, of grand battles between the forces of good and evil. People have used Lego to teach robotics, build houses, working cars. But it's weird to me that games seem to be one of the company's biggest issues. The modern games rely more on deconstruction, of breaking objects to get pieces needed to auto-build the solution to a puzzle or to get money to buy things in the in-game shop. The aforementioned attempt at board games came off as more of a "Here's a lego set with instructions on how to play a game" (however I don't have any first-hand experience with the board games, this view has been formed from the marketing of the games rather than playing them. They aren't exactly easy to find nowadays). To me, maybe because it was because they worked with a game company to make a game, Lego Mario feels like it has the one thing the Lego Games were missing, an active encouragement to build your own stuff, build with your own pieces.
Though the builds in the starter course are very basic, the modular nature of them makes them very easy to be customized, to be rearranged and expanded on, something that Lego Mario himself adds too due to him mainly relying on a colour sensor to tell what he's standing on. This line has the potential for very interesting MoCs once people start to add onto them with their own Lego Collection. On the electronic side, Lego Mario himself would benefit from customization. Features like adjustable starting time and music would help a lot in this regard, and a way to handle some form of multiplayer (potentially with a Lego Luigi?) would open the door to a wide variety of level styles, something that the guarded fortress kind of has thanks to its branching pathways. I think a lot of adult Lego fans are ignoring the potential this line, this idea, has. This isn't some drastically different system like Bionicle and CCBS are (though I know large chunks of the adult Lego community hates those systems for similar reasons). This still uses the traditional Lego system at its core, making the physical pieces just as limitless in potential as a standard 2x4. I think there's a lot of potential here, and I think those looking to make a game out of Lego are going to make some incredible things with this foundation. It just needs to be opened up a bit more on the electronic side, and someone to start thinking outside of the box with ways to use the foundation. It might not be Minifig scale, but is that really a limitation? Hopefully, at some point, I can review the rest of the wave. Unfortunately with the way the world is right now, especially where I live, and my position going into the pandemic, and especially going into September, it's hard to justify getting the sets at full price. I have got something on the more "adult-oriented" side of the spectrum coming up though. I'm not done with Lego Mario yet.
To those wondering why reviews have been so dry lately, aside from motivation issues due to lock down, recently I've been experimenting with a new laptop that is strong enough to record footage. Up on the Mediaholics RAW channel, you'll find that I've been uploading parts of a (mostly) blind, no commentary playthrough of the Pokemon Rom Mod, Renegade Platinum. At time of writing, 9 parts in and I've just gotten to Eterna City. I plan to upload a version with commentary to the main channel eventually, once the version without commentary has finished being uploaded. If you're curious, you can find the Raws channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUAML-HidNwB5AyWObrqn9Q
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