And today, we've got this thing right here.

This is the Retro Power Retro Bricks

Nintendo Entertainment System-style model.

Really, it's a case meant for use

with Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 computers.

I've put together a few

of these kinds of Lego models here on LGR.

And everybody was always saying, "Oh man, it'd be so cool

"if those fit, like, a Raspberry Pi inside."

Well, this one does.

In fact, this is only one of several, sold by Retro Power

on places like Amazon.

At the moment, it costs $26 for just the model itself,

and $36 for this one you're seeing here,

with two USB NES-style controllers.

But, if you saw my unboxing recently,

you'll know that this was actually sent to me

from the company.

They know I was interested in these kind of things,

having seen my previous videos,

so they hooked me up with a few models, no strings attached.

And you know, I can do whatever I want with 'em.

And what I wanna do, is put them together,

so that's what we're gonna do.

So throughout this video, we're going to unbox the thing,

assemble it, get the Raspberry Pi set up with it,

and try out these controllers,

and see how it all works together.

And the first step in the process,

is cuttin' the thing open.

So let's get to it.

(mellow music)

(cardboard snapping)

All right, so inside, it pretty much,

it looks like a Lego kit, though it's not a Lego kit.

In fact, you're not gonna see Lego or Nintendo

or any brands like that on here, because it's not.

It is, however, compatible with Lego system parts

and these pretty much look like NES controllers, to me.

The grayish color of the plastic shell

is a little bit off, it's a little more beige

than I think it should be.

But other than that, I mean, it feels pretty spot on.

It does feel a little bit lighter weight

perhaps a little bit cheaper,

and I don't doubt that they are.

I don't expect them to be top notch.

However, this instruction booklet is pretty impressive.

Just for the fact that it exists!

I've had a bunch of

these third-party, Lego-style kits, in the past,

and a lot of them don't actually come

with a physical instruction booklet like this.

Usually it's just a PDF download

from their website, or something.

This one does come with a physical book,

and I appreciate that.

And honestly, it looks pretty good on first inspection.

So, all right, we've got six plastic bags here

full of all sorts of lovely looking parts.

And it's my standard fare to just undo everything

and put it in a big pile

and then separate them all out by color,

and vaguely by size, and stuff like that.

Just so I can quickly-ish, see what I'm doing,

when I'm gonna be going through

the instructions, step-by-step.

And no, I'm not gonna be showing every bit

of this assembly process.

That would take, oh, I don't know,

I think it took me like 45 minutes

to actually do all of this.

I'm just gonna cut it up this time around.

But yeah, all together, there are 30 steps

in the instruction manual.

And the first one here, really is just putting together

the base of the thing.

Which, man, it looks a Lego kind of project,

so that's typical.

And immediately, I'm realizing

that it is actually gonna end up being

a little bit larger than I expected it to be.

Not that it's a bad thing (chuckles)

it's just that all of my other Raspberry Pi 3 cases

have been much smaller.

Like this is about twice as large

as any of my other Pi cases.

You know, just something that I notice right off the bat.

Anyway, once this first part is going,

we've got a bunch of these,

lots of long, thin, structural buildup, kind of pieces.

And really, for the first 10 or so steps,

that's all we're gonna be doing.

Yeah, step four is just

more structural integrity type of stuff,

building up quite a bit in the middle,

which is good to see.

Because again, this is much larger

than the actual Raspberry Pi,

so I'm assuming a lot of this is just structural.

Once I got to step five though,

there is this little bit here that's supposed to mimic

the LED, the red power display, from the NES,

in the bottom left there.

I thought that was kinda nice.

It doesn't actually light up or anything,

but, you know, it looks the part.

Same with the power and reset button

that go to the right of that.

But, then over there,

in the bottom right of the front of the system, well,

when it's all said and done,

there was supposed to be

these two little black tall pieces here,

that are gonna go in with those little connector bits.

That's supposed to mimic where the controllers would go

on the real NES.

However, two of the black pieces

they just weren't here at all!

And I went through and looked through all the footage.

You know, double-checked, triple-checked everything.

Went through all the bags, and boxes,

and packaging and everything, all over again.

I spent about five or six minutes looking

and nope, they just were not included.

And, you know, I just got in touch with the manufacturer

and said, hey, there's an issue.

And they're like, "Oh, crap, we can send extra parts."

Anyway, we'll address that later on.

Step six is just flipping the thing around

and doing a whole lot more structural stuff.

And then in the back rear (chuckling),

I like this little touch.

I just like any of these little touches like this,

that make it look like the real thing, to some degree.

And this section right here,

this is where the power connector would go,

which continues on to step seven.

You have the little round cylindrical piece right there

that looks like the AV output, or, you know,

the RF connection.

Continuing on to the next step

where the right-hand side of the unit,

you get the little red and yellow,

for the RCA connectors, right there (chuckling).

I don't know, these little things amuse me.

Like I loved building the Apple II and the IBM PC,

for all the little internal components

that you just will never see, in expansion cards,

and microprocessors and stuff.

This one, unfortunately, doesn't have anything like that.

It really is, again, the main idea

is to just hold a Raspberry Pi.

So you get a nice flat surface here,

that we're putting together, right in the middle,

followed by some more structural stuff

to build up the secondary gray,

like the lighter gray color that goes on top.

And yeah, that's at this point,

we start getting to some of the flat pieces.

And this is where the Raspberry Pi itself,

is going to sit, when all is said and done, which is smart.

I'm glad they didn't end up going

with all of the little round bits on top,

and ended up with completely flat pieces.

That way, the Raspberry Pi just slides right in

and nothing on the bottom of the board

is gonna stick on anything.

But yeah, these next three or four steps,

it really is just more of the same.

Lots of structural supports in places,

to snugly fit the Raspberry Pi

in the left of the unit there.

And effectively, the Raspberry Pi is gonna be going into

what would be the cartridge slot of the NES.

Which I thought was interesting placement.

I kind of expected it to be around back

so that like, you know, cords would be coming out

the proper spot, or something.

But, no, I guess they did it this way

because, well, as you can see here,

let's just go ahead and get the Raspberry Pi.

This is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

And yes, this is the same unit that I used

for my building a better PlayStation Classic video,

a little while back.

The way this just slides into the NES here,

we're actually gonna be building around it.

So you do have to insert it on step 16,

about halfway through the build process.

This is why I'm assuming

that it's in the cartridge slot position.

The USB ports are gonna be sticking out the front.

But yeah, now that we've got the Raspberry Pi in there,

we're just gonna be, like I said,

building around it (chuckling),

and just putting all sorts of long pieces

and slats and supports, and stuff like that, on top of it

and around to the front of it.

So yeah, once it's in there, it's in there (chuckling).

It's held very tightly.

I'm kind of not the biggest fan of this, to be honest,

because well, for one thing, you can't access the SD card.

You know, the microSD is in the back,

facing the back of this little NES model,

when everything is done.

Which means that you will

have to slightly disassemble this thing,

if you ever wanna take the Pi out of there,

or access the SD card.

Now I pretty much never have to do that,

I just use USB and WiFi functionality

to, you know, do things

like transfer ROMs and all of that stuff.

But yeah, this was just a different design

than I anticipated that it would be

when I first was looking at the box art,

and all that kind of stuff.

You know, the cords coming out of the left-hand side

of the NES, USB out the front,

and no access for the SD card.

Anyway, at this point, I mean, we're pretty much done.

It's, we're, you know, just feeding through

a whole bunch of this nonsense (chuckling)

'cause it really is just more of the same.

All the supports are in place.

We're just gonna be having

some of these little joint hinge pieces here.

And this is gonna be where the cartridge slot door

is going to connect to.

And then there's the top of the unit itself,

which, ha ha, I really like the way

that they put this together.

Like on the right-hand side of the top of the actual NES,

you have all of those little vents.

Well they use these little slat pieces, 16 of them,

to mimic that aesthetic,

and (chuckling) it looks pretty good!

And combined with all of the really flat, smooth pieces,

yeah, it's a convincing NES aesthetic.

And the last five steps of this assembly project

consist of just putting together, the actual door itself

to go in front of the cartridge slot,

or really, in this case, in front of the Raspberry Pi.

So, yeah, it's just a combination of some long pieces,