Carl Merriam, the Lego designer behind nostalgia-bait like the Nintendo Game Boy and Piranha Plant, has outdone himself with a new Donkey Kong arcade machine set that even got a thumbs-up from Mario's creator. Or so he's been told.

The set, which drops August 1st for £149.99 or €169.99, doesn't quite let Jumpman (you know, proto-Mario) reach the top of the screen - because Lego physics. But it does include a fully functional game with a joystick, a jump button, and a lever that dispenses an endless stream of barrels. Those barrels are actually the same ones Lego used in its 1989 pirate sets, which Merriam calls his favorite detail. The trickiest part? Getting them to roll slowly enough without jamming. "I rolled thousands of barrels down those tracks to figure it out," he told The Verge, probably while humming the Donkey Kong theme.

Nintendo had one specific request: make the poison barrels heavier. So Lego stuffed Minifigure heads inside them. Classy. The set also features a detachable Jumpman figure, so you can skip the game and just move him with your fingers if you're lazy.

Merriam explained the barrel mechanism: it's essentially a pump that holds 20 barrels, stacking 14 on the side. Each lever pull adds one to the bottom and releases one from the top, creating an infinite loop that Merriam describes as "barrels of fun." The barrels roll down over steps, studs, slopes, and Technic beams to mimic the game's slow descent. Getting them back up was a challenge - they tried worm gears and force multiplication levers, but the answer was just adding more barrels.

The joystick moves Mario via a long lever and a "dingler" (yes, that's the technical term), while the jump button works like a piano key, with gravity returning him to the bottom. The set goes on sale August 1st, and we're still waiting on US pricing. But hey, at least Miyamoto is happy.