Lego Releases a Donkey Kong Arcade Machine with an Endless Stream of Barrels

Lego has unveiled a new set — a scaled-down replica of the Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. It was designed by Karl Merriam, the man behind nostalgic sets like the Nintendo Game Boy and the Piranha Plant. It goes on sale August 1 for $200 (or £150, €170).

Unlike the original game, there's no way to “beat” this cabinet: the character Jumpman — the future Mario — can't make it to the top on his own. But, just like the brick-built pinball machine that costs $230, it does have working mechanics. The joystick moves the hero left and right, a button makes him jump, and a lever releases the next barrel for him to hop over.

An Endless Stream of Barrels

The most interesting part is how the “endless” supply of projectiles works. According to Merriam, it's his favorite feature of the set: it uses the very same barrels Lego produced back in 1989 for its first pirate lines. The mechanism works like a pump: 14 barrels stack up along the side of the model, and with each pull of the lever one is added at the bottom while the top one drops onto the track. The system holds 20 barrels in all, so up to six can be rolling down at once. Once they reach the bottom, they land in a hopper connected to the pump — creating a closed loop that the designer calls “barrels of fun.”

The hardest part turned out to be getting the barrels to roll slowly without jamming. Merriam dialed in the right speed using steps, sloped elements, and Lego Technic beams, which are a bit thinner than regular bricks. “I rolled thousands of barrels down these rails to tune everything… they drove me bananas,” he admits, playing on how the “monkey” theme drove him crazy. He tried countless ways to get a barrel back to the top — from worm gears to catapults — but the most reliable solution proved to be simply adding more barrels.

Nintendo's Approval

Merriam says he never met Shigeru Miyamoto in person, but he heard that the creator of Donkey Kong and Mario was pleased with how the set turned out. Nintendo's one specific request concerned the details: to make the “poison” barrels heavier than the regular ones. They came up with an elegant fix — hiding minifigure heads inside them.

The Jumpman figure was made removable, so if the owner likes, they can walk the hero over to Pauline themselves — the very same “damsel in distress” who, in modern Nintendo games, has far more agency.

Source: The Verge