Fan creates Hyrule map of NES game The Legend of Zelda with 25,000 Lego bricks

Ian Roosma, a senior product owner of digital card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends, is apparently a huge Lego and Zelda fan. He recreated the Hyrule map from the 1986 NES game The Legend of Zelda in large format with a total of 25,000 Lego bricks.

Roosma has published a ten minute video about his creation. The video is basically a walkthrough for the game, including accompanying original sounds and music. The camera zooms in on specific corridors and parts of the overview map after a short overview. The camera then moves through the map, which corresponds to the path players must travel in the actual game.

His creation is 76cm high and 218cm wide and hangs on his wall. 25,000 Lego blocks were used. The Lego level contains a total of 493 enemies and 2779 trees. As if that wasn’t complicated enough, Roosma also made the whole thing in 3d. For example, the rivers are somewhat lower than the surrounding land and the trees have different heights. Just for the variation in the trees and stumps, he used four different Lego blocks. He collected all the blocks via the BrickLink website, where Lego blocks are traded.

It had to be a complicated project so that it would take quite a long time to complete, Roosma says in an explanation to Kotaku. In the end, it took him four months to complete the Lego map. The developer says that Zelda on the NES has eminently nostalgic value for him, because it was the beginning of open world games for him. It was one of the first games he played.