It’s playtime and play time.
For generations, those two things have meant very different experiences. One might bring to mind toys, building blocks and creating something with your own two hands, while the other can mean sitting down, grabbing a controller and getting lost inside a video game. Yet LEGO has spent years proving there really doesn’t need to be much of a line between the two.
Now one of the most recognizable consoles in gaming history is getting rebuilt one brick at a time.
The LEGO Group and PlayStation have officially unveiled the new LEGO PlayStation set, a massive 1,911-piece recreation of Sony’s original PlayStation console and controller. Revealed during PlayStation’s State of Play broadcast on September 3, the new set takes gamers back to where the PlayStation story began while transforming that piece of gaming history into something fans can actually build.
And this isn’t simply a small LEGO interpretation of the console.
Once completed, the PlayStation itself measures more than 6 cm high, 26 cm wide and 19 cm deep, making it a near 1:1-scale recreation of the original hardware. The build includes functional Open and Power buttons alongside a brick-built version of the original PlayStation controller that can actually be plugged into the console.
Yet some of the most fun details are hidden inside.
Opening the LEGO console reveals two buildable dioramas celebrating games from the original PlayStation era. “Gran Turismo,” first released in 1997, is represented with a miniature racing track and tiny cars, while 1999’s “Ape Escape” gets its own scene complete with the game’s familiar monkey helmet. Both dioramas can remain tucked inside the finished PlayStation or be removed and displayed separately.
It is those smaller details that make the collaboration feel like more than LEGO simply recreating another piece of technology. The original PlayStation helped define an entire era of gaming, and for plenty of people, memories of that gray console are inseparable from the games they spent countless hours playing on it. Hiding pieces of that history inside the build makes opening the console almost feel like uncovering those memories again.
There is also something wonderfully fitting about turning an original PlayStation into a LEGO set. Both brands have spent decades giving people a way to play, create and disappear into different worlds, even if they traditionally went about doing so in completely different ways.
Now you can spend hours building your PlayStation before spending hours playing one.
The LEGO PlayStation set will be available to LEGO Insiders beginning October 1 before receiving its wider release October 4 through LEGO Stores, select retailers and LEGO’s online store.