Lego’s Smart Play system was introduced at CES in January and released on my birthday in March this year. And I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a set, especially since the first Lego theme to get the clever little bricks with a custom ASIC inside is the Star Wars one. And while there may not be a ton of deals on Smart Play set, Star Wars Day is still the perfect excuse to fill up your basket.
I’m a Star Wars fan, a Lego obsessive, and a tech nerd, and the Lego’s Smart Brick sets sit right in the middle of that Venn diagram for me. I’ve got both the Darth Vader TIE Fighter set and Luke’s Red Five X-Wing myself and have been having a blast with them, recreating trench runs around the house with my two little boys.
One of the things I appreciate about the Smart Play setup, especially for my little ones, is the fact that, while they’re techie and have little computers inside them, they don’t use any screens at all; they’re purely intuitive and aural. And they don’t just memorize audio files to replicate the sound of Vader’s life support system, or the sound of the X-Wing’s engine firing up. Each Smart Brick contains a mini synthesizer to deliver the audio cues provided by the Smart Tiles either tacked onto the different models or built into the minifigs.
And there’s something super charming about the way that means it’s not super precise in terms of the audio. It’s like the old Star Wars games on an 8-bit computer, where the John Williams’ scores are recognizable and the characters’ speech is an approximation not a replication.
I will say these sets aren’t necessarily for the adult aficionado looking for anything in terms of precision from the models either. The needs of accessibility means the Smart Bricks always have to be easily removed from the model for charging, and need to be close to their compatible minifigs, too. That makes the likes of the TIE Fighter and X-Wing more simple than the more realistic sets in the theme.
But they’re a hell of a lot of fun to play with, and each of the sets comes with multiple tiles and extra little details that only add to the play. The ships each have blaster functions that react to each other, so while the boys and I are chasing each other around we can keep shooting the other down, and the bricks react to color so we can use green hammers to fix them and blue hoses to refuel them, also part of the sets.
