We Build the LEGO Arcade Machine, an Homage to 1980's Gaming Culture

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Set #40805 contains the gamer den of your dreams.

Building the caller LEGO Arcade Machine is an intimate, rewarding experience. On its exterior, this acceptable is simply a classic, standup coin-operated arcade cabinet, with colorful decals connected its sides, an aerial vent connected its back, and a joystick/button interface for 2 players connected its dashboard. The crippled is titled "Space," an intentionally generic rubric meant to encapsulate Galaga, Space Invaders, and different titles from the aboriginal '80s abstraction shooter genre.

LEGO Arcade Machine

LEGO Arcade Machine

The acceptable comes with galore stickers, though LEGO printed the crippled surface straight onto a ample panel. So, if you're the benignant of idiosyncratic who frets implicit misaligning your stickers, cognize that the cardinal ocular representation is static and fixed. If you enactment LEGO coins into the slots, they volition rotation retired of the alteration dispensers below.

We Build The LEGO Arcade Machine

The set's interior is wherever the LEGO Arcade Machine truly shines. The full furniture opens connected 2 hinges connected the arcade's near side, and wrong is an extended diorama of a gamer's den. There's a brownish three-seater sofa with a modern crippled controller connected its leftmost cushion. There's an old-fashioned container TV, playing what looks to beryllium an Out Run-inspired racing game. High up connected the partition is simply a exemplary of the classical LEGO Space Galaxy Explorer from 1979 and a sai to correspond the LEGO Ninjago franchise.

Above the sofa are boxes that correspond antithetic console generations – the archetypal looks similar the Nintendo GameCube. The 2nd looks similar the Sony PlayStation. And the 3rd mightiness beryllium a Playdia? I'm not truly sure. To the close of the sofa is simply a miniature standup arcade furniture that's playing Junkbot, a gathering puzzle crippled that LEGO launched connected its website successful 2001. The acceptable comes with a azygous LEGO minifigure of a '90s styled gamer with stubble, a shaggy haircut, and a grey hoodie.

You tin implicit this physique successful a azygous sitting – it is six bags full (with a azygous leafage of stickers), and the last effect stands astir six inches high. As you're gathering up the operation of the exterior, you're affixing decorative elements to the other broadside to physique the interior.

This physique attack means that you don't truly spot what you're creating until it's astir complete; each measurement feels contextually isolated from the bigger whole. But thankfully, due to the fact that the physique is comparatively small, you don't consciousness disoriented. Everything comes into wide presumption astatine astir the infinitesimal you commencement wondering astir it.

This is simply a tiny acceptable – lone 469 pieces – particularly erstwhile compared to the monolithic sets we typically cover. But it makes enjoyable, businesslike usage of its physique time, and it has an fantabulous terms constituent – lone $40, beneath the 10 cents per ceramic threshold that LEGO aficionados usage erstwhile determining a set's worth.

It is simply a bargain for a good build, and we anticipation to spot much LEGO sets with this ethos. There's nary crushed wherefore an "adult" physique indispensable beryllium priced successful the mid-hundreds; conscionable due to the fact that we (might!) person disposable income, it doesn't travel that we privation to walk it all, particularly successful this economy.

I similar LEGO sets that uncover their secrets – that see hidden elements that are imperceivable astatine archetypal glance, oregon whitethorn beryllium imperceptible to anyone but the builder. And the LEGO Arcade Machine is simply a premier illustration of that. It is an arcade furniture – albeit a snazzy-looking 1 – and thing much unless the builder makes the determination to unfastened it up. It's a spot similar performing a magic trick. Because you cognize the secret, you get to experience, second-hand, the absorption of idiosyncratic other discovering it for the archetypal time. And that makes for a batch of vicarious fun.

LEGO Arcade Machine, Set #40805, retails for $39.99, and it is composed of 468 pieces. It is disposable now.

Kevin Wong is simply a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing successful LEGO. He's besides been published successful Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him connected Twitter astatine @kevinjameswong.

Originally posted:

Aug 19, 2025 2:47 pm

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