Lego expands its Super Mario world with customization tools, new Mario power-ups, and more characters

Lego's partnership with Nintendo delivered a pretty awesome debut earlier this year with the interactive Lego Super Mario Starter Course, and now it's following that up with additional sets designed to complement the first. These include a new Master Your Adventure Maker Set,' which adds customization options by tweaking Lego Mario's response via three new bricks, and a new way to shuffle the rules for each level. Lego and Nintendo are also releasing additional themed Expansion sets, new power-ups for Mario, and a second series of mystery characters to incorporate into level builds.

Image Credits: Nintendo

The Master Your Adventure Maker Set includes 366 pieces in total, and will retail for $59.99. The Expansion sets include a Chain Chomp jungle-themed playset ($19.99), a Piranha Plan puzzle challenge set ($29.99), and a new Poison-themed biome for Mario to explore featuring Wiggler ($39.99). The two new power-ups for Lego Mario are his Penguin suit, and his Tanooki suit, which retail for $9.99 each respectively.

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Each new Series 2 Character Pack retails for $4.99. These come in packaging that doesn't reveal their contents until opened, adding some degree of chance to which of the new characters you end up with. The Series 2 characters include Huckit Crab, Spiny Cheep Cheep, Ninji, Foo, Parachute Goomba, Fly Guy, Poison Mushroom, Para-Beetle, Thwimp or Bone Goomba.

Image Credits: Nintendo

These will all go on sale starting January 1, both from Lego direct and from its retail partners. That's just after the holiday rush, which seems like a bit of a miss for what you'd expect would be a popular set of gifts, but Nintendo's still selling the original starter course and other kits

Hand-crank a level of Super Mario Bros. on Lego's new 2,646-piece NES kit

Here's the full lineup of Lego Super Mario sets, due out August 1