USgamer Community Question: What Nintendo Labo Toy-Con Kit Do You Want in the Future?
A cardboard-enabled port of Rock Band? Just a sword? Let us know in the comments!
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This week, Nintendo surprised the world with a surprise trailer for their next experimental peripheral: Nintendo Labo. It's a D.I.Y.-leaning project that's geared towards kids (and crafty parents), but it's an endearing and unexpected prospect nonetheless.
The trailer that debuted with the announcement showed a bunch of little teasers of what's to come for the cardboard-focused peripheral, from a VR-like headset (props to Caty for predicting this on the latest episode of The USgamer Podcast due to an older patent) to a bird-thing. So for this week's Community Question, we ask this: What sorts of "Toy-Cons" would you like to see take shape in Nintendo Labo?
Mike Williams, Editor
I am old and broken. There is no childlike joy within me. I look at Nintendo Labo and see the promise of the concept, the happiness in children as they build cardboard structures and integrate them with the Switch. I see families playing together, laughing and smiling. I see this creating future engineers and programmers and that's awesome. It's just not for me and that's fine.
So, off the top of my head, a set of wings. The Joy-Cons would go in each wing and you'd need to flap in order to keep yourself aloft in the attached game. Yeah, that sounds fun for kids.
Nadia Oxford, Staff Writer
Swords, baby. Or a full sword-and-shield getup. I feel like some kind of Legend of Zelda mini-game will inevitably arrive as part of a Labo kit. Think Link's Crossbow Training, except … better.
The Robot Kit demonstrates Nintendo has plans for full-bodied Labo kits meant to interact with docked Switch software. I'd love for Nintendo to take me through Hyrule with a to-scale Master Sword and Hylian Shield, even if I look like a world-class dunce waving around a cardboard sword while Moblins die on-screen. At least I'll get to feel like a kid again for a short period of time. I suppose that's the point.
Caty McCarthy, Staff Writer
In Nintendo Labo's debut trailer, there were quick clips of what looked to be a drum pedal (or wah-wah pedal for a guitar—who knows!), but it piqued my interest. Rock Band (and Guitar Hero, by extension) have long been dead, even if both tried to revive themselves in recent years. Both didn't do well, even if Guitar Hero had arguably been the better revival because it actually tried something new in its GHTV experiment, where songs cycled in like a radio station.
Seeing just a glimpse at the pedal got me thinking of an exciting idea though: a new Rock Band (or Guitar Hero, or something similar) that utilized cardboard instruments somehow. It would be a little clunkier, no doubt, but it would be a less-wasteful version of it, given that cardboard is biodegradable. When the times would move past instrument-minded rhythm games again, the remnants of the game trend wouldn't be clogging up some landfill again. So come on Nintendo: do me a solid and give me a space to sing Coheed & Cambria songs in the luxury of my own home without embarrassment again.