Review: 71367 Mario's House & Yoshi
Posted by Huw,
Since posting about Super Mario on Friday I'm afraid to say I've got sucked in to it now, so expect a raft of reviews in the coming weeks.
Today I'll take a look at 71367 Mario's House & Yoshi which provides an attractive habitat for the Italian plumber for when he's not busy stomping on his enemies.
Characters
Yoshi the dinosaur is a popular character in the franchise. This is the only set that contains him, which might be reason enough to purchase it.
The designer has had to make some compromises at this scale so, like the Mario figure, he's not as rounded as he should be.
However, he has some nice details, including the red saddle, or shell (from what I can tell there seems to be some dispute over exactly what it is!), on his back.
The eyes and nostrils are printed. The feet part is new in Super Mario sets and unique in bright orange in this one.
I don't think Yoshi to scale with Mario because I believe he rides on his back in some games.
The second character in the set is a Goomba, who has a 'surprised' facial expression which is different to that in the starter set.
Construction
The set, like all Super Mario ones, comes with no paper instructions. I find building using the app a bit tedious so thankfully PDF versions of conventional-style instructions can be downloaded from LEGO Customer services.
Parts are in numbered bags. Bag 1 builds Yoshi, bag 2 the house and bag 3 the tree and hammock.
There are a few attractive flourishes, such as the postbox and picket fence. The hammock can be rocked from side to side using the knob on the front.
I like the contrast between the bright orange house, the red roof and the green plate it stands on.
Mario just about fits in the house but not through the front door!
Barcodes
The set comes with three barcodes:
- Talk to Yoshi, which is unique to the set and used to indicate to the app that you own it.
- On the Goomba
- A star, which is hidden in the roof and accessed by bashing down on the eaves.
When Mario scans Yoshi's tile, he greets him with 'hello' or 'it's-a-me' and a heart appears on his chest.
The star power-up is a handy one to have because it doubles points when stomping on enemies also allows you to defeat those that you wouldn't be able to otherwise, like ghosts.
Play
Over to Jon, aka AcademyOfDrX :
I didn't get this set at first. Why do you need a super star block when there's only one enemy, the weak Goomba? Why doesn't Yoshi have a scan tile, and why doesn't he function as a power-up? What good is the hammock, which doesn't give any coins at all?
Then the set reminded me something from the Mario games: not Mario's house, but Yoshi's in Super Mario World. That is the very first location in that game, but instead of traditional gameplay, there is a note from Yoshi that he has gone to rescue his friends from Bowser. Then I understood what the set wanted to teach me about game and level design: the importance of narrative.
There are two unique play functions in this set. First, the tile that is placed beside--but not on--Yoshi is not actually a Yoshi tile. Instead, it's a dialogue tile. You don't get coins from Yoshi, you get coins from talking to Yoshi. He's not a power-up or an enemy, he's Mario's friend.
Second, even though the hammock doesn't give coins, it does unlock a digital feature in the Mario figure, as rocking him in the hammock puts him to sleep. While that doesn't help with clearing or winning a level, it does help you tell a story. You can put Mario to sleep and then wake him up, following the arrow sign to the start of his adventure, or reward him with a nap after sliding down the flagpole.
Generalising beyond this set, builders and designers shouldn't just consider the plot of how each platform and character fits together in a chain of events, but the story that is told as Mario moves through a level.
Points
The scope for earning points with this set, if used standalone with just the start pipe and end flag, are limited:
- 1 for stomping on the Goomba
- 5 for talking to Yoshi
Nevertheless, if you scan the star initially, then bash the Goomba, natter to Yoshi, and repeat until time's nearly up, you can rack up quite a high score:
For some reason, I was given an additional 10 seconds' time during this test. I'm not sure if that was a result of scanning the star, or something else.
Verdict
The appeal of this set is not so much what it brings to the playability of the game but more so that it provides somewhere for Mario to rest when he's not busy bashing things, something that I suspect kids in particular will appreciate when not playing with him. The fact that it contains Yoshi adds to the allure.
It certainly seems to be one of the more popular expansion sets: it's on back-order at LEGO.com in Europe and at Amazon.co.uk. I had to order mine from Argos.
At the full RRP of $29.99/£24.99 for 205 pieces it doesn't seem particularly good value for money, but that's the case for most of the Super Mario sets.
101 likes
38 comments on this article
This set has me inetrested. I have to pick this one up. I just got the NEs waiting to build it.
I think it looks a lot like the house from paper Mario. I’m pretty sure he gets coins from the hammock if you do it long enough
These sets supremely interest me.
Something about Mario with black, soulless eyes just creeps me out. Pretty good for horror-themed brickfilms, though.
Might be worth it for Yoshi and the printed pieces, but only at a substantial discount.
I am really enjoying learning about the game play and story telling of these sets. Thanks!
I enjoyed reading this review, but it also reconfirmed that this is very much not for me. And that's okay.
This is the one expansion set that works by itself to me. I'm definitely getting this one probably if it goes 20% off soon if not then at LEGO during the next Double VIP event.
Love the Yoshi build, the House build is cute and the addition of another Goomba is always nice then the Hammock build is just borderline clever imo love that build so much.
Speaking personally, I think $30 is a reasonable price if slightly on the high side. My kid loves Yoshi though, so I would have ended up paying whatever Lego asked for.
No wonder that Goomba is surprised, he has to deal with Yoshi. That Mario figure with the black eyes will haunt me a lot.
This is actually probably my favorite set from the Mario line! The build is quite nice, you get a famous character with it, and it's nice to have a seen that's a nice little place for Mario to relax between adventures.
@BulbaNerd4000 said:
"I think it looks a lot like the house from paper Mario."
I believe it's supposed to be just that. Very surprising and pleasing, considering how infamously adamant Nintendo is about not acknowledging anything from the older Paper Mario games nowadays.
I think this a reference to Super Mario World, where the player can ‘enter’ a non-playable level at the very beginning which shows that Yoshi isn’t home.
Is there any possibility that we will get a “feel guide” article for the character packs?
Can I just say that I find @Huw 's emotional journey super wholesome? Can't wait to see more reviews!
No interest in these sets, but I do enjoy the reviews quite a bit still. And Mario's black eyes make every image that much better.
I went out of town on Saturday to try to pick up a full box of the character blind bags. Not only was the store I went to out of them, it was out of nearly all the sets! There were around 3-5 copies of the Piranha Plant Slide and 5-7 copies of this one and that was it. I picked the Slide since it seemed to have more playability and was cheaper, but I'd really like to get my hands on Yoshi someday.
One correction to the article, the Hammock *does* give you coins! If you let Mario fall asleep long enough he'll give you coins when he wakes up. It takes a long time for him to fall asleep so it isn't the most efficient way to gather points, but it works!
Please, for the sake of all of us, switch Mario on before you take the photos for the article. The sets are so lovely and standing in the background is soulless black-eyed mario-husk, just watching.
71367 Mario's House and Yoshi
Perfect for today's quarantined society, this amazing play set includes a house for Mario, perfect for stay-at-home restrictions as it does not allow anyone else to enter! Outside, kids will enjoy building a fully functional swinging hammock for outdoor excitement! A pesky Goomba also makes an appearance, perfectly positioned to encourage social distancing! And also there is Yoshi, remaining at a safe distance of six feet!
Disclaimer: Mario figure not included. App required for maximum enjoyment.
@SeekerBear
And now we see why I don't write the descriptions for LEGO
I did not think to download the PDF instructions! Of course! That’s a great idea. I was really trying hard to be adaptive and at least say I tried out the in-app instructions. Verdict: I very much dislike them and would skip several steps ahead just to make it more interesting, or I would have to skip really far just to make sure I did (or did not) need to build multiples of something concurrently (pointing my finger at you, Piranha Plant Side). I don’t want to be resistant to change, but I really like the paper instruction books. Or at least a PDF. Thanks for the tip!
@JammyD said:
"Please, for the sake of all of us, switch Mario on before you take the photos for the article. The sets are so lovely and standing in the background is soulless black-eyed mario-husk, just watching. "
I'm illuminating the photos with flash so the LCD is just not bright enough to be seen under those conditions. The way round it is to use flash, but keep the shutter open for a second or so to capture the backlit LCD, which is what I did here: https://images.brickset.com/news/53191_P1049804.JPG. That can have the knock-on effect of affecting white balance, though. I'll see if I can do that in the future, where practical.
My kids have already built houses out of Duplo. Apparently it is important to them that Mario has a nice place to live. :)
@Huw said:
" @JammyD said:
"Please, for the sake of all of us, switch Mario on before you take the photos for the article. The sets are so lovely and standing in the background is soulless black-eyed mario-husk, just watching. "
I'm illuminating the photos with flash so the LCD is just not bright enough to be seen under those conditions. The way round it is to use flash, but keep the shutter open for a second or so to capture the backlit LCD, which is what I did here: https://images.brickset.com/news/53191_P1049804.JPG. That can have the knock-on effect of affecting white balance, though. I'll see if I can do that in the future, where practical."
I do prefer the latter method of capturing images. Looks so much friendlier and cheery.
And the white in the image looks absolutely fine on my laptop.
The extra coins are, for what i believe, ending just in time. When Mario has only fifteen seconds, he gets a warning, and after that ending with only a few seconds left you get extra coins. Sometimes 8 as well. Or maybe it is just like the old Mario game on a certain number?
@ash2907 said:
"And the white in the image looks absolutely fine on my laptop."
That's because I tweaked it in post-production.
@Brickodillo said:
"The extra coins are, for what i believe, ending just in time. When Mario has only fifteen seconds, he gets a warning, and after that ending with only a few seconds left you get extra coins. Sometimes 8 as well. Or maybe it is just like the old Mario game on a certain number?"
Correct. There seems to be a maximum of 10 available, when you finish within a second or two of the limit. Any sooner and you receiver fewer, 6 or 8, I believe.
This set is sooo cute!
This is a cute set. I love the look of Mario's house, with its outwardly sloping walls and roof, and even if Mario doesn't fit through the door he fits inside well enough to peek through the window or the open door. The hammock is another clever little feature even if it doesn't play a specific role in the gameplay.
I'm curious what other sorts of "friend" characters for Mario we might see! So far there's Yoshi from this set and Toad and Toadette from Toad's Treasure Hunt, but there's plenty of other friendly characters in the Mario series. The two most notable ones to come to mind (and the ones I'd consider the most likely to appear in sets in the future) are Mario's brother Luigi and his love interest Princess Peach, but there's several others as well such as Princesses Daisy and Rosalina, friendly civilians such as the Lumas from Super Mario Galaxy, the Piantas from Super Mario Sunshine, and the pink Bob-omb Buddies from Super Mario 64. Heck, they could even just add additional recolors of Toad and Yoshi, since those are merely a few individuals from larger societies!
Incidentally, if you're a fan of differently colored Yoshis, you can build a yellow one that matches the build of this one using common yellow parts as well as the arms and printed eye and nose bricks from the Koopa Troopa fig in other sets (along with the Koopa Troopa's green shoes if you really want to be accurate to yellow Yoshi's typical color scheme). Other Yoshi colors will have to wait until the new lengthened arm pieces are available in other colors.
I love this review, but could you please turn on The Lego Mario figure while taking pictures please? Those black eyes stare into my soul.
Yoshi looks great, pity one cant buy him separate. Mario in the picture of him coming out of his house looks friggin creepy! Here's a me, JOHNNY MARIO!
The eco-friendly side of me appreciates that these Mario sets don't come with instructions, but the convenience-appreciating side of me is a little surprised by that change.
If I pick up a Super Mario set, it'll most likely be this one. Very cozy, and works well as a display piece.
@legom0nk3ys said:
"I love this review, but could you please turn on The Lego Mario figure while taking pictures please? Those black eyes stare into my soul."
See my comment above...
ok guys, I have to decide: should I buy the starter set for 60€ or buy Zelda Breath Of The Wild for 70€?
Zelda Breath of the Wild. Surely you could find it used for cheaper than that right?
@Armstrs said:
"Zelda Breath of the Wild. Surely you could find it used for cheaper than that right?"
ehhh, in Italy not that much. Nothing under 60€. But I'll try Zelda BOTW, thanks
@gabri_ves said:
"ok guys, I have to decide: should I buy the starter set for 60€ or buy Zelda Breath Of The Wild for 70€?"
Two completely different things ??
I say buy Zelda. That game is so nice. But don’t try to finish the game as quick as possible.