Video game’s bit-mapped beast rendered beautifully and blockily.

It’s been a long time since polygonal graphics became the standard for video games. There’s a timeless appeal to the bit-mapped visuals of the 8 and 16-bit eras, though, in much the same way that a mosaic has a unique artistic quality that’s missing from photo-realistic depictions.

So when Japanese Twitter user @FukuTaku10 set out to recreate Zoma, the archvillain of classic Square Enix role-playing game Dragon Quest III who was rendered on-screen in pixels, he worked with a similarly block-based medium, Legos. And how did his project turn out?

Incredible.

“There’s nothing that can’t be made out of Legos,” declares @FukuTaku10 in his self-introduction, and this is some compelling proof right here. While it’s amazing enough how well he managed to replicate Zoma from the front, the perspective from which he’s seen in the game, @FukuTaku10’s Lego sculpture isn’t a flat portrait, but a 360-degree sculpture, with fully realized sides and back.

▼ A video showing the Lego Zoma, who’s 45 centimeters (17.7 inches) tall, from all sides

As an original Lego project, obviously there were no pre-existing plans or directions for @FukuTaku10 to work off of, nor any in-game rear or side views of the character. So he consulted figures of the Dragon Quest villain to get a feel for his three-dimensional form, then just started building.

It wasn’t a straight path from start to finish, either. Along the way he had to scrap sections and redo them multiple times when things turned out to not be taking the form he’d envisioned.

@FukuTaku10 persevered though, and roughly one month after Zoma was chosen as his next project in a poll by his Twitter followers, the dark lord was complete.

@FukuTaku10’s Zoma is based on the character’s appearance in the Super Famicom/Super NES remake of Dragon Quest III, but isn’t an exact imitation of the on-screen graphics. In order to keep the sculpture at a manageable size, Lego Zoma’s hops are a little lower than his video game inspiration’s.

▼ Some of @FukuTaku10’s other work

@FukuTaku10’s Zoma will be on display at the Yamashiroya toy store across the street from Tokyo’s Ueno Station until mid-September, but even if you can’t stop by to see it, we can all look forward to the next Dragon Quest Lego sculpture he shares photos of.

Related: Yamashiroya
Source: Twitter/@FukuTaku10 via IT Media
Images: Twitter/@FukuTaku10
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