Massive Monkey Island Lego Mosaic For Charity Seeks Kickstarter Help
One of the guys behind the ill-fated Mass Effect 3 "Space Edition" lottery is Kickstarting an eight-foot Lego reproduction of The Secret of Monkey Island title screen.
Does the name Michael Davis ring a bell? He's half of the duo who, in February 2012, came up with one of the copies of Mass Effect 3 that EA launched into space and then attempted to raffle it off, with a third of the proceeds going to Child's Play. That effort ended in tears - turns out the whole lottery thing was kind of illegal - but now he's back with a new idea, and this time he knows exactly what he's doing.
The plan is to build a brick-for-pixel recreation of The Secret of Monkey Island title screen out of Lego bricks. There's only one problem: The game's 320x200 resolution means that Davis will need 64,000 bricks to get the job done. That's a lot of Lego. The good news is that Lego is offering free shipping until Christmas (and the company has thus far indicated that it will honor the offer even with such a huge order), but it's still going to run $6400 just for the bricks. Davis has about $1000 of his own money to dedicated to the project, and he's going to Kickstarter for the rest.
There's not a lot in the way of rewards for backers, which is understandable given the one-off nature of the project, but people who pony up $25 or more will come away with something for their trouble. The truth is that it's really just a donation to charity, albeit one that makes a guy do something really crazy and time-consuming in the process. The Secret of Monkey Island creators Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer apparently find the idea amusing enough to take part: they've both agreed to sign the thing once it's done.
And what's the charity, you ask? Davis can't say, not because it's a scam but because the charity in question has an official policy of not being directly involved in crowd-funding efforts. It is a charity that helps children, however, and the Monkey Island Lego Mosaic will be one item among many sold off during its annual auction. I'll leave you to put it together.
With just under two weeks left on the clock, The Secret of Monkey Island Lego Mosaic Kickstarter has already raised more than half of its $5400 goal. If this sounds like something you'd like to throw some money at, you may do so at Kickstarter.