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This Lego pinball machine built from 15,000 bricks really works

Lego plus pinball equals a nostalgia dream come true with Benny's Spaceship Adventure.

Bonnie Burton
Journalist Bonnie Burton writes about movies, TV shows, comics, science and robots. She is the author of the books Live or Die: Survival Hacks, Wizarding World: Movie Magic Amazing Artifacts, The Star Wars Craft Book, Girls Against Girls, Draw Star Wars, Planets in Peril and more! E-mail Bonnie.
Bonnie Burton

Both Lego and pinball machines have such cool retro cred they will never go out of style.

That's most likely exactly what maker Bre Burns thought when she built this fully functional Lego pinball machine called Benny's Spaceship Adventure.

She used more than 15,000 Lego bricks, including Lego Mindstorms NXT programmable bricks, to make sounds and tally a high score just like a real pinball machine. 

No glue, screws or extra fabrication were used to make this impressive Lego pinball machine. Even the pinballs themselves are Mindstorms caster balls.

Standing over two and a half feet (76 centimeters) tall, the pinball machine incorporates three Lego Mindstorms NXT brain bricks connected via Bluetooth. These NXT bricks control nine NXT servo motors, seven touch sensors, two color sensors, two light sensors and two ultrasonic sensors, according to the Brothers Brick blog

To earn points playing the Lego pinball machine, players have two bays of bumpers to hit as well as a set of drop targets that will trigger a multi-ball sensor that will give you a new ball and play a song.

The coin-operated pinball machine even includes a gum ball dispenser. 

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