I made the "real" LEGO Super Mario today, coincidentally on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Famicom (well, Japan's ahead by several hours, so it has already been the 15th for a while while I was making this).
I learned how to use Studio 2.0 (a LEGO design program), which is integrated with BrickLink, so I could buy exactly the pieces I needed.
The 485-piece build includes 372 1x1 tiles, of which the brown ones were the most expensive, by far. The other pieces averaged at $0.07 each, but the brown tiles were $0.79 EACH, meaning that despite being 30.7% of the pieces, the 149 of them made up $117.10 (or 82.6%) of the $141.70 it cost. And that's before shipping, as I had to get the parts from France and Germany. So it was $181.51 (Canadian). (I forgot how much customs/import fees were that were in addition to the shipping, so it's probably actually over $200.)
Would have been much cheaper if I adapted this to have a red shirt, blue overalls and white gloves, the modern colours (as seen in Super Mario Maker and the corrresponding amiibo), but I figured I might as well go as authentic to the original sprite as possible.
I'd always wondered why people make pixel art out of Perler Beads or Pixelblocks instead of LEGO (or if they do make it out of LEGO, using the regular blocks with studs on top). Now I'm pretty sure it's the cost...
