8 Video Game LEGO Sets That Prove the Brand Is Targeting Adults More Than Ever

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Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

The LEGO brand has always dealt primarily in toys for children, with the LEGO brick system launched all the way back in the early 50s conceptualized as a kids’ creativity toy. While that may have been the intent, though, adults have always had an interest in LEGOs as a medium of creativity, moreso as the years go on and those who played with LEGOs in their youth grew up. Heck, that’s literally the big twist of The LEGO Movie, that it was all just a kid messing with his dad’s LEGO hobby dioramas.

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LEGO is well aware of this, which is why it has begun targeting adults more in its marketing and manufacturing efforts. You can see this primarily in the various video game-themed LEGO sets. Sure, there are a lot of simple ones based on current kid-popular IPs like Fortnite, but there are also sets that are far too complex or expensive for young builders, based on iconography that a young gamer wouldn’t be familiar with, or in some cases, both.

When was the Last Time Tails Rode That Thing?

Let’s start with a simple one: The LEGO Sonic Cyclone set. It’s a super straightforward kit, containing Tails and Metal Sonic minifigs, and a buildable Cyclone for the former to ride around in and shoot the latter. It’s simple enough that a kid could build it, and cheap enough that a kid could afford it. How is this targeted toward adults, then? Let me answer that question with a question: when was the last time you saw Tails riding in the Cyclone?

The Cyclone, specifically in its bipedal walker mode, was originally introduced in Sonic Adventure 2, a game that came out 25 years ago. Since then, the Cyclone has only appeared two more times, once as a cameo in Shadow the Hedgehog, and once as a special ability in a post-launch update for Sonic Frontiers.

The kit itself is simple enough for a kid to enjoy, yes, but what would a kid, even one with knowledge of current Sonic stuff, say about it? “Oh, it’s Tails riding in a mech thingy.” An adult, on the other hand, one who played Sonic Adventure 2 in their youth, would immediately clock it as the Cyclone, and that spark of familiarity is the clincher. It’s a small detail, but debatably a critical one.

7 LEGO Super Mario: Game Boy

Those Bygone, Monochrome-Screened Days

I’ve seen enough reaction videos on YouTube to know with relative certainty that if you put an original Game Boy in front of a kid right now, they probably wouldn’t know what it is. Portable gaming has certainly gone through many changes since 1989, but the form factor of the first Game Boy is still iconic, at least to those who grew up with it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that the LEGO Game Boy model is built with adults in mind.

Compared to some of the other sets on this list, the LEGO Game Boy isn’t that complicated. It doesn’t have any moving parts beyond its faux swappable cartridges and displays, though the surface of the “device” is surprisingly intricate once it’s all put together.

Rather than just being something you display or play with, the LEGO Game Boy is almost like a piece of nostalgia you can conjure forth from the plastic ether. It’s roughly the same size and weight as the real deal, and even if it can’t actually play games, the action of swapping the cartridges will assuredly give you flashbacks.

6 LEGO Super Mario: Super Mario World: Mario & Yoshi

Please Don’t Drop it Down a Pit

Super Mario World has had a monumental effect on several generations of pop culture, and I don’t just mean the game. ROMHacks based on the SNES classic were huge in the mid-2000s, and I’d wager anyone who grew up in that decade or the one that preceded it can immediately identify its signature sprites for Mario and Yoshi. It’s these two generations that the LEGO Super Mario World set are intended for.

The LEGO Super Mario World set allows you to create a standing statue in the image of Yoshi and Mario’s sprites directly from its namesake game. Yoshi marches along the ground while Mario rides upon his back, Super Cape fluttering in the wind. Turn the crank on the side, and Yoshi walks while Mario bounces up and down.

Even putting aside the technical intricacy that makes this little illusion work, the medium of LEGO is uniquely perfect for recreating pixelated game sprites. It was all colorful squares back then anyway, and what are LEGO bricks if not colorful squares themselves? People have been using LEGOs to recreate sprites for years, so the Super Mario World set is more or less just an officially-licensed take on the same thing.

5 LEGO Super Mario: Nintendo Entertainment System

The One That Opened the Door

Prior to 2020, LEGO surprisingly didn’t dabble that much in video game iconography. There were some game-themed packs for LEGO Dimensions in 2015, but no major standalone kits like you’d see from Star Wars or Harry Potter. That started to change in 2020, which saw the release of not just the original interactive Mario set, but also the LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System. It was arguably this first kit that really got LEGO’s rectangular foot in the door.

The LEGO NES consists of the titular video game console, a connected controller, a faux cartridge for Super Mario Bros., and most interestingly, a CRT TV displaying a scrolling image of that very game. In the same vein as the Game Boy, kids today definitely wouldn’t be able to identify this kit’s contents, and goodness knows, nobody but a working adult could afford the over $200 price tag.

More than that, though, the LEGO NES is a true commitment to authenticity, thanks in large part to the inclusion of the CRT TV. Gaming was so, so different back when the NES hit the scene. Those brave few gamers, still reeling from the Crash of ‘83, were the first to plug this strange new toy into their boxy, glass-screened TVs to discover what would become gaming’s future. This set has sadly been discontinued, but it still set quite the precedent for LEGO game stuff going forward.

4 LEGO Icons: Atari 2600

Going Real Old School

The NES may have been the game console that helped drag the industry out of the Crash of ‘83, but there were plenty of games before its advent. The face of the second generation of consoles, and the first true cartridge-swapping console in history, was the Atari 2600. Even when I was a kid, the 2600 was already the stuff of legends, so to make a LEGO set out of it is truly one for the oldheads.

The LEGO Atari 2600 is similar to, yet distinct from the LEGO NES. Like that set, it’s meant to be a full recreation of an Atari 2600 console, complete with the signature single-button joystick and several swappable cartridges. While it doesn’t have a fake TV with a scrolling image, the switches on the top all work, so you can pretend you’re playing the real thing, at least.

In lieu of the TV, the LEGO Atari 2600’s secret is in its cartridges, which are not only cast in the image of the real cartridges for Adventure, Asteroids, and Centipede, but also open up to reveal 3D vignettes based on their respective games. Graphics weren’t nearly good enough back then for advanced imaging, so you had to use your imagination to bring things to life, and the resulting experience was not dissimilar to these vignettes.

3 LEGO The Legend of Zelda: Great Deku Tree 2-in-1

For Zelda Fans New and Old

If you took a casual glance at the front of the box for the LEGO Legend of Zelda Great Deku Tree set, you’d probably think, “Wait, that’s the Deku Tree from Breath of the Wild, you don’t need to be an adult to know that!” Too true, hypothetical observer, but this is a 2-in-1 set, which means the Breath of the Wild Deku Tree isn’t the only thing you can make.

The LEGO Deku Tree can be configured into the titular elder arbor from both Breath of the Wild and Ocarina of Time, with a set of Link and Zelda minifigs from both games to complete either appearance. The Ocarina of Time configuration in particular also comes with a little Deku Sprout and a pair of Deku Babas, beings that someone who’s only played Breath of the Wild wouldn’t recognize. There’s also an articulated Skulltula hanging in the back of the Ocarina of Time configuration, and boy, if those things don’t inspire rage and hatred in old-school gamers.

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Putting all that aside, a multi-configuration LEGO set with articulated elements included is definitely too much for a little kid to handle, at least in a concise timeframe. That’s not even mentioning its $300 price tag.

2 LEGO Icons: Pac-Man Arcade

All it Needs is a Neon-Colored Carpet

It makes me sincerely happy that arcades have begun to make a comeback in the United States, even if it’s more ticket games and flashy mobile ports than traditional arcade cabinets. A kid going to an arcade nowadays is probably hoping to win something from the ticket counter or claw machine, but in the old days? The Pac-Man days? You went to the arcade because it was time to go to the arcade.

While it may not be as tall as the genuine article, the LEGO Pac-Man Arcade cabinet harkens back to those neon-soaked years, allowing you to assemble the signature bright yellow cabinet with a darkened overhang and dark blue maze on display. It even uses a light brick to illuminate its coin slot, something I haven’t seen even in current arcades since they all use card swipes now. The joystick is fully articulated, and while you can’t actually play Pac-Man, you can turn the crank on the side to make all the sprites move around.

As an extra homage to those bygone days, this set comes with a minifig of an arcade gamer at a Pac-Man cabinet of their own, standing on a cyan-colored carpet with an old gumball dispenser behind them. It’s like a microcosm of my own childhood, rendered in LEGO form.

1 LEGO Pokémon: Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise

Even Most Adults Can’t Afford this One

Despite literally being two of the most profitable IPs on the face of the planet, Pokémon and LEGO have somehow never crossed over. Pokémon had some dalliances with Mega Blocks in the mid-2000s for some inscrutable reason, but a LEGO partnership never manifested. That is, until now. In 2026, LEGO finally debuted its first round of Pokémon-themed LEGO sets, one of which is so elaborate and expensive, that even most adults would probably give it a wide berth.

The LEGO Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise set allows you to create scale replicas of the classic Gen 1 starters, collectively perched on a type-segregated display panel. Charizard’s wings and tail and Blastoise’s cannons are all articulated, though this definitely isn’t a set you play with like a toy. No, this is something to be built, appreciated, and never touched. This is largely due to the kit’s mildly ridiculous $650 price tag; if you’re buying this for a kid, they’d better keep it in immaculate condition.

Admittedly, I don’t really know what the current vibe is toward Pokémon from the kids today. It’s still popular, obviously, but if there are any especially beloved Pokémon, I’m not sure that it’d be the Gen 1 starters. Well, even if the young’ins don’t appreciate them, us oldies still know who the OGs of the OG are.