Back in the bygone era before videogames, “playing” meant screwing around with physical toys—action figures, dolls, bugs, whatever. In my house it mean turning wrapping paper tubes into swords and hitting your father with them. (Sorry, Dad.) When gaming consoles came along, though, play for many kids, myself included, got a lot more sedentary. Nintendo’s[1] latest set of Switch peripherals—known as Labo[2]—attempt to rectify that problem, using the same sense of engineering that inspires kids to turn packing materials into toys.
The idea behind Labo is simple, if a bit counterintuitive. Sold as kits, each Labo comes with “Toy-Con” projects—cardboard pieces that can be assembled into various objects and festooned with the Switch’s console and controllers to create interactive games.The first, the Variety Kit, contains a fishing pole, a house, a motorbike, a piano, and two RC cars. The second, the Robot Kit, gets assembled into a backpack with a series of pulleys that when moved by users’ hands a feet manipulate a robot in an onscreen battle. Think of these like the old-school Power Pad, Mario Kart wheel for Wii, or Duck Hunt gun for NES—just with some assembly required.
All these peripherals are a little goofy, quite fun, and even a bit unexpected for the latest offering from one of the world’s biggest videogame companies. But they’re also very intuitive. I haven’t played a videogame system regularly since the Wii—which, TBH, I only got because I missed Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64—but I picked everything up right away.
Part of this stems from the fact that 50 percent of the fun of Labo is just assembling the parts—an exercise in creativity that one of my demo-mates rightly referred to...