LEGO Super Mario, trailer for Luigi and 2-player mode, available from August

LEGO Super Mario

Nintendo and LEGO have released a new trailer for LEGO Super Mario. The two companies, in fact, have opened the pre-orders of LEGO Luigi, and of the 2-player mode. This first major update of LEGO Super Mario will be available starting August 1, 2021.

For the first time ever, you will have the opportunity to connect LEGO Mario and LEGO Luigi, experiencing brand new adventures for 2 players in the universe of LEGO Super Mario. This new feature will allow two players to enjoy the LEGO Super Mario universe simultaneously, for new adventures built with bricks.

Once connected via Bluetooth, it is possible to experience emotions multiplied by 2 with LEGO Mario and LEGO Luigi (or any combination of the two figures).

"For us it's about encouraging continuous creative development and extending fun time. With today's announcement, we don't want to simply lead LEGO Mario, LEGO Luigi and their friends and foes into a new interactive world , for endless fun; what excites us is to expand their play experience, along with the LEGO Super Mario universe, with more new sets and characters that we hope will thrill fans, "says Simon Kent, Creative Lead, LEGO Super Mario.

Luigi's Adventures - Starter Pack is the latest extension to the LEGO Super Mario product line - the result of a unique partnership with Nintendo, which introduced a whole new way to play with bricks LEGO. Players will be able to get their hands on Luigi with the LEGO Super Mario Luigi's Adventures - Starter Pack starting August 1st.

In addition to unveiling the new 2-player Bluetooth mode, the LEGO Group is also introducing four new expansion sets, two new Power-Up Packs and ten new Character Packs. The four new expansion sets are comprised of highly engaging builds for kids to expand their Starter Packs, featuring elements that are suitable for both single play and team play, and therefore ideal for collecting extra coins.

The "Bowser's Flying Tall Ship" expansion set is available for pre-order from today. The set gives fans the chance to build an exciting new level within the universe for the first time by taking on the infamous flying ship. Fans will be able to fight against Kamek, a Goomba and a Rocky Key, and then the ship itself! In addition, the latter can be arranged in "flight mode" or folded into "broken mode".

Other new products introduced today include: Mario Rana and Mario Ape Power-Up packs, which allow players to vary the game and dress up LEGO Mario in his cute frog and bee outfits and a Boss Sumo Bro Tower expansion set, where kids can use their LEGO Mario figure and / or LEGO Luigi to take down the Topple Tower - fun whether to play alone or to play with friends and family.

LEGO Luigi The complete list of products announced today are:

• 71391 Bowser's Flying Sailing Ship, Expansion Pack (available for pre-order from today) (€ 99.99)

• 71388 Tower of the Boss Sumo Bro, expansion pack (€ 29.99)

• 71389 The world - Lakitu's sky, expansion pack (39.99 €)

• 71390 L killing of Reznor, Expansion Pack (€ 69.99)

• 71392 Mario Rana Power-Up Pack (€ 9.99)

• 71393 Mario Ape Power-Up Pack (€ 9.99)

• 71394 Character Pack - Series 3 (10 Collectible Character Packs, including Galoomba, Parachute Bob-omb, Crowber, Boo, Amp, Torpedo Ted, Bony Beetle, 1-Up Mushroom, Scuttlebug and Swoop) (3.99 €)

The LEGO Super Mario Luigi Adventures - Starter Pack and Bowser's Flying Sailing Ship set are available for pre-order from August 1, 2021 in LEGO stores, on LEGO.com and at select retailers around the world. world.

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Lego's two-player Super Mario update adds Luigi, and a massive Bowser airship

This is several kits' worth of Super Mario bricks, but the Lego approach to Super Mario remains inspired.

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Lego Super Mario is getting a sequel this summer: the physical brick sets, which first arrived last year, are adding a Lego Luigi figure and a new collaborative two-player mode, along with new kits including a massive Bowser's Airship. The new kits are arriving August 1, but I got to check a few expansions out, along with the new two-player Lego Luigi update. The interactive, brick-scanning, motion-sensitive figures can work together across Lego play areas now, which meant my kid and I could play around at the same time.

To catch you up, in case you missed last year's Lego Super Mario: the brick sets were the product of a four-year collaboration with Nintendo, and feature a brick-scanning Mario figure that can recognize specially-coded blocks and brick colors. By starting on a warp pipe and then finishing on a flag, a whole coin-collecting timed game can be tracked by the Mario figure. The kits can be mixed and matched: there are also separately-sold Mario power-up suits, and many sets feature hidden blocks that are meant to be bopped for extra points. It's pretty brilliant.

Lego's character designs are fantastic.

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And yet, Lego Mario wasn't quite the gaming breakthrough I was first expecting. I first thought Lego Super Mario would be an interactive board game of sorts that could be redesigned in infinite ways, like a real-life Super Mario Maker. It is, but the game goals are pretty loose and open-ended, and players can 'cheat' in a sense, bopping bricks out of order and flying around to different parts of each course. Where was the challenge, I wondered? But maybe that's not the point. The Mario kits are more about imagination and casual play, with some fun game bonuses thrown in. The kits are still a lot more play-focused than most completed Lego kits, which is something I'd love to see more of in other Lego projects.

Lakitu appears in a Sky World expansion set.

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The ideas in last year's kits are expanded on in the new brick sets. The Adventures with Luigi Starter Course adds a green Luigi interactive figure to the mix. Both Mario and Luigi can Bluetooth sync to each other by pressing a back button, and then the two figures can bop around the same set at the same time, collecting coins in a co-op mode.

Two player mode doesn't require the new Luigi: two of the original Mario figures would work, too. Luigi and Mario greet each other with some little cute voice messages, and the new firmware update to the figures adds the compatibility for the new kits and enemies. (Updating the figure firmware means pairing with an app on your phone or tablet, which took a while with the early software build).

Lego Luigi and Lego Mario, on Bowser's Airship.

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The Luigi starter course costs the same as the Mario starter course: $60 in the US, with the figure and enough bricks to build a basic little pipe-to-flagpole level with a few challenges, plus a pink Yoshi, Bone Goomba and Boom Boom figures. Lego's UK site lists the set for £50 and in Australia it's AU$90. Other expansion kits range in price and size, one of the largest being a new $100 Bowser Airship, which I also assembled and played with. 

The Bowser Airship took my younger son about a day and a half to build, and it looks spectacular. The ship opens up on hinges, and has hidden scannable parts that can be attacked like phases of a boss battle (a giant Bowser fist flies off a catapult attached to one of the masts).

The companion iOS and Android app has interactive instructions for the brick sets (the kits don't have paper instructions, oddly) and can track scores for paired Mario and Luigi figures, but Lego insists the kits are designed to be used away from screens. I find the Lego Super Mario sets' relationship to the apps a bit confusing: I used the apps to build the sets, and yet I felt like I wanted to play away from the app, and yet didn't always understand what each kit's game goal was.

Updating firmware on the Super Mario figure. You may need to do this just once, thankfully.

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The two-player addition makes sense, in that two kids would play with a kit at the same time. My eight-year-old son and I put together a few kits and connected figures, and we had fun exploring the sets we made. I can't say the game rules made much sense, but it was fun to explore. Again, that seems more of the point. Treat the Super Mario Lego kits as clever and interactive toys, with the gameplay part more of a fun bonus. This isn't Super Mario Maker on the Switch, but it would be amazing if Lego made more brick sets with interactive ideas as clever as Super Mario.

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