Hands on with Nintendo Labo

Nintendo Labo combines the fun of building stuff with cardboard with games on the Nintendo Switch. Rich DeMuro tries it out at a special Nintendo event in San Francisco.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Nintendo Labo is making cardboard fun again. I'm rich Jmiro.
This is rich on Tech Daily. So if you're a parent,
you've probably known this scenario. You buy your kids a
new toy and what do they end up playing with
the cardboard box that it comes in. Well, maybe this
is what inspired Nintendo's latest creations called Nintendo Labo. This

(00:25):
is a toy kit that harnesses the power of the
Nintendo Switch but also uses cardboard to bring toys to life.
I know it sounds like a head scratcher, and it
kind of is. Nintendo put a teaser video out on
YouTube a while back, and lots of people were saying,
Oh my gosh, this looks so cool, but you really
have to try it out to see what it's all about.

(00:45):
That's probably the reason why Nintendo brought me and my
son up to San Francisco to test it out. We
were there at a special Nintendo Labo lab with a
bunch of other parents and kids, YouTubers, bloggers, all handpicked
to play with Labo before anyone else. All right, so
what is It's a toy kit that comes with big
pieces of cardboard and they're all kind of pre scored,
so all you have to do is punch out the

(01:07):
pieces and fold them together to create things. But here's
the brilliant part. You follow on screen instructions on the
Nintendo switch, which are really kind of elaborate. You can
kind of rotate, zoom in and out see how things
should look and what you should be doing. Think about
like if you ever play with Lego, how you follow
those instructions, except these are much much easier to follow.
So what do we built. We built a radio controlled

(01:29):
car and here's how it works. You build like kind
of the cardboard part, but we built the two Nintendo
controllers into it. Those became the wheels of the car,
and then when you press the buttons on the Nintendo switch,
the little RC car would actually go and it went
by the two controllers sort of vibrating and on a
smooth surface that would cause the cardboard to move forward.

(01:49):
I know, it's ingenious and this is the kind of
stuff that you get with the labbo. So once you're
done building your creations, kids are gonna love decorating them. Now.
Because we were at the Nintendo event, they had all
kinds of cool stuff at our disposal. Today, decorate with
like little stickers and colored tape and markers and crayons
and all kinds of neat stuff. None of that comes
in the box, But if you don't want to find

(02:11):
that stuff in a place like Michael's, you can buy
these special accessory kit Nintendo's gonna sell for ten dollars,
which includes a bunch of that stuff. We also made
a cardboard fishing rod and this was really ingenious as well,
so it took a while to put this thing together.
It was quite elaborate. And then it has like rubber
bands in it that simulate pulling fish out of the water.
So I know, again tough to explain, but the Nintendo

(02:33):
switch slides into like a little cardboard base which shows
images of fish on the screen, and when you pull
the rod up, you feel the tension from the rubber
bands as you try to catch fish, and I thought
that was really cool. Nintendo really puts some thought into
these toys. Now, we didn't build the rest of them,
but we did see all the various Labo toys in action.
There's a house, there's a motorcycle, a piano, a robot

(02:55):
suit and they're all elaborate and quite interactive. So with
the house, for instance, you can play games on the
screen like the Nintendo Switch. Screen becomes the front of
the house, and then you insert little cardboard plugs into
sockets on the side, and when you switch those sockets out,
you can play different games on screen. It's really weird
but really fun. So in addition to making and playing,

(03:16):
there's another aspect to the whole labo thing, and that's learning.
Each kind of toy gets its magic through interactions with
the Nintendo Switch. So, for instance, on the RC car,
all of a sudden, you realize there's a little ir
camera on the controller that can follow you around and
you see yourself on the screen on the Nintendo Switch,
So that was cool. In the piano, for instance, it
can change its tune by sort of seeing different reflective

(03:39):
tapes that are on the cardboard plugs that you insert
into that It all sounds a little confusing, Well, you
just kind of have to play with it to understand,
and I think kids will really get the hang of
this as they figure this out. We had lots of
fun building, decorating and playing with the creations, and I
think that's worth the experience of these toys. But your
kids can also take it to the next level and
really understand how they work. And they can also code
them to do their own commands, so that's kind of

(04:01):
cool too. I think this is a really unique way
to use the Nintendo Switch to play more than just
standard video games. But it's also kind of hard to
grasp the concept, so I think that could make or
break the commercial success of this. So if you think
back in Nintendo's history, They've had a lot of ups
and downs. They're famous for making these sort of unique
accessories for their game consoles. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

(04:24):
Virtual Boy not so much, Light Zapper awesome, power pad awesome.
Then there was that little gyroscope guy. I always thought
that was really cool, but I don't really think it
was very successful. Bottom line, if your kid is into
video games and building things like Lego Creations, I think
you should give Labo a try. It launches April twentieth
with two kits. There's a Variety kit which is seventy
dollars that includes the part for the RC cars, the

(04:46):
fishing rod, the house, the motorbike, and the piano. Then
there's the Robot kit that's eighty dollars and that includes
everything you need to build this pretty elaborate interactive robot suit.
There you have it. If you want to see the
story on my Nintendo Labo feel you can go to
my website. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv
for the link. And if you enjoy this podcast, please

(05:06):
review us and rate us on the Apple Podcasts app.
That way more folks see the podcast and experience it.
And thanks to everyone who has done that so far,
I really do appreciate it. I'm Rich Damiro. Thanks so
much for listening. Rich on tech dot tv. I'll talk
to you real soon.