When it comes to video game legends, perhaps none has come close to what Nintendo has done through Super Mario Bros. Now that Nintendo is poised to release its revolutionary Nintendo Switch sometime in March next year, and with Super Mario Run scheduled to be rolled out for the iOS a few hours from now, Jason Allemann of JK Brickworks saw it fit to dedicate his next MOC to one of the icons of video game villainy – the LEGO Piranha Plant.
Based on a modified version of one his earlier works, Jason’s working LEGO Piranha Plant is incredibly accurate, complete with the iconic green tube and brick pavement. The design is pretty straightforward, though it proved to be a bit of a challenge. Here’s how master builder Jason describes his MOC.
Although the mechanics ended up being fairly straight forward in the end, it took a lot of time and effort to get to that point. Often, the biggest challenge with models like these is getting everything to fit in the space required. I was determined to keep the pipe no larger than 10×10 studs in diameter, which meant I had to fit everything in an 8×8 interior space, minus the corners that make it ’round’.
In addition, I really wanted the crank to be on the back of the model. You may notice that on the demo model I show in the video, the crank is on the side of the model, which is the easiest and most logical place for it to go given the orientation of the chain drive. It actually took some significant rebuilding to fit all the gears needed to move the crank to the back, without interfering with the space required for rest of the mechanics when the plant was fully retracted.
In the end, it was time well spent, as I’m really happy with how it turned out.
As a Nintendo fan myself, I’m likewise very happy to see this as well. Now let me see if I can come up with a complete brick-built Super Mario level using these critters…
Thanks Jason for sharing this MOC!