LEGO Announces Gorgeous Retro Nintendo Entertainment System Set

The good people at LEGO have clearly been peeking into my dreams at night to steal ideas for new sets. Not that I'm complaining, because the newly announced Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) set is one of the most beautiful things I think I've ever seen in my life.

The toymaker has collaborated with Nintendo once again to come up with this brick-based monument to retro gaming. The 2,646-piece set will be available exclusively at LEGO retail stores and via the official website from August 1st for £209. You'll then be able to pick it up from select retailers from 2021.

£209 is little pricey... but there's absolute no way I'm not blowing a portion of my next paycheck on this badboy. Check out the nostalgia (or NES-stalgia) filled trailer below.

The set comes with a nearly-life sized version of the classic 1985 console, complete with a controller and cable. You can even open and shut the console, just like the real thing. I'm aware that sounds like a real boring detail, but it's not. It's brilliant. So zip it.

There's also a neat Super Mario Bros. game cartridge, and a retro-style TV that displays the iconic plumber in action. All of this is, of course, built entirely from LEGO. I genuinely cannot wait to build this thing with my own two hands and remember a simpler time. A time when I wasn't actually alive, sure, but a simpler time all the same.

"Super Mario has been a cherished figure in the gaming world for over thirty years now," Maarten Simons, creative lead at LEGO said in a press release. "Many adults still fondly remember that first time they saw Mario leap across the small screen, even if the graphics were a lot simpler than they are today.

"With the LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System, we're letting them truly indulge in that nostalgia, recreating one of the most-loved consoles of all time so they can see the Super Mario from their childhoods once again - and even to share the experience of gaming in the 1980s with their own children."

This isn't the first LEGO/Nintendo collaboration of the year. A few months, the two companies announced an ambitious interactive play-set modeled after Super Mario. That was undeniably cool and should go down brilliantly with the younger fans out there. But this NES? This is for adults who want to play with LEGO and feel super cool doing it.