GAME CHANGER

Nintendo Labo breaks ground with DIY accessories

NEW YORK I have seen the future of video games. And it is made of cardboard.

This spring, gaming giant Nintendo will launch Nintendo Labo, a series of do-it-yourself kits designed to let kids build their own video game accessories, ranging from a fishing rod controller to a dollhouse inhabited by a virtual creature to a miniature working piano.

Assembled from sturdy, die-cut cardboard pieces with no tape or glue required, each Nintendo Labo project — dubbed a Toy-Con — will come with an activity or game that uses the Nintendo Switch game console in interesting and creative ways.

Nintendo Labo (pronounced LAH-bo) is aimed at letting kids and parents bond over the experience of “making something, playing with it and then also understanding the background technology that brings it all to life,” Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé said in an interview this week.

Nintendo Labo will launch April 20 with a Variety Kit (US$69.99, Canadian pricing to be announced later) that includes five Toy-Con projects — a pair of insectlike remote-controlled cars, a fishing rod, a motorbike, a house and a piano. Also available at launch will be the Robot Kit (US$79.99) that lets kids assemble a cardboard backpack, visor and arm sensors, using them to guide an onscreen robot through a variety of adventures.

While many game studios are toiling away on visually dazzling titles powered by expensive virtual reality headsets, Nintendo Labo — and the Robot Kit in particular — is an offbeat and charmingly lo-fi approach to making players feel like they’re inside a game.

“It’s not meant to be some sort of competitive answer (to virtual reality),” said Fils-Aimé.

“It’s meant to be something totally unique, totally unexpected.”

During a 90-minute hands-on demonstration of Nintendo Labo in New York prior to this week’s unveiling — Postmedia Network was one of just four North American news outlets given a sneak peek — I popped pre-cut pieces out of a cardboard sheet to assemble a bug-like remote-controlled car that used the vibration feature in the Switch’s controllers to propel it forward. Simple, but very clever.

Next up was an extendable fishing rod with a working reel, a significantly more complex project with multiple steps and components. But the assembly instructions displayed on the Switch screen were easy to follow, clearly detailing which pieces to use, how to fold them into the proper shapes and where to insert the motionsensing Joy-Con controllers.

If Ikea adopted Nintendo’s approach to assembly instructions, countless man-hours — and possibly marriages — could be saved.

The bright orange line from the fishing rod connected to a boxlike housing for the Switch, with the game console’s screen displaying an ocean teeming with aquatic life.

With hidden elastics creating tension on the line and the Joy-con controllers housed in the reel sensing my movements, the illusion of reeling in fish was completely convincing.

While the kid in me gleefully tried to snag increasingly bigger catches, the nerd in me was fascinated by how the Joy-Con controllers and Switch console were being used to power these experiences in wildly inventive ways.

The piano Toy-Con, for example, has more than a dozen working keys, interchangeable knobs that alter the piano’s sound and even a lever to control octave.

All made from cardboard, and all driven by a single Joy-Con controller slotted into the back of the piano, using its built-in infrared camera to track each component and translate movement into sound and visuals on the Switch’s screen.

For something so low-tech, it felt almost magically futuristic. But part of Labo’s appeal lies in the way it explains the science behind each Toy-Con, with an interactive cross-section diagram showing the principles that make it work.

Nintendo fully expects DIY tinkerers to hack the various Nintendo Labo projects and come up with unexpected new ways to use them, said Fils-Aimé.

“We do believe that there will be experimentation that some of these communities will do on their own. And from our perspective that’s a good thing.”