#i miss my 3ds so much. i miss playing pokemon ranger its a game much like platinum that feels like home orz ive replayed guardian signs coun

[theood]

It was a thing that went and passed but I do semi regularly think about modded iPods. I assume the scene is still big and you CAN get software that lets you run it like a regular mp3 player)not require apple music...

My want for an mp3 player again will never die!!! I want more excuses to buy CDs. I wanna make my own discs. I want to hold my 3ds again AUGHHHH

[joytraveler]

25. Reward For Being Good

The first thing on screen is Redhead Mom again! In fact it's the same scene as in Keep Your Promises, except it's daylight outside and she has a smile on her face.

"..............."

aroseahorseboy: AY REDMOM

[ "You did a great job playing so far! You haven't missed any games!"]

"......Cool! Hi, uh, I've seen you at least one before, nice meeting you in a better mood?" Bea finds herself smiling at the screen. After Box Baby, this feels like meeting up with an old friend.

[ "You must really love video games! Me too. I'm glad you picked Joy Traveler 1*67!" ]

"I dunno, have you seen some of the stuff in these games?"

Syrupentine: We love you too Redmom! <3<3

[ "Since you do... Here's a special treat for you! Have fun, but don't forget to come back and play more Joy Traveler games!" ]

"Wait, what? Treat? Yes, Bea like treat" When she dismisses the text box, it fades to... a list of letters, and a cursor to choose one.

HNV: oh boy alphabet soup my favorite mom

"Have I ever mentioned I think moms are great, maybe not Isaac's but.. Oh.. Do I get to choose? How does this work? Well let's press B, that's the name of the show!"

B opens up another, much shorter list-- it consists of "Bally Astrocade", "Bandai Super Vision 5000", and "Back."

"I used to be a huge Power Rangers fan so let's see what the Bandai one is all about!"

Another list of 7 items appears: Beam Galaxian. Gun Professional. Missile Vader. Space Fighter. Submarine. Othello. PacPacBird.

Bee52: dude wtf

"What is this? Redmom, are you a giant nerd?? Me too!! I didn't even know about most of these though"

Syrupentine: Yo Bea I heard you like games so I put a multicart in your multicart so you can game while you game

"GAMECEPTION!"

aroseahorseboy: these kinda suck but its awesome to get more games at all!

"Let's not be rude, thank you Redhead Mom! You just helped me get another five or six episodes out of this!"

HNV: Dude. Bea. I have a hunch. Go back and pick "N"

"Mmmkay let's see what happens here.." she does so, sipping her Cactus Cooler thoughtfully.

The list that pops up here are much more familiar phrases: 3DS. DS. Game Boy. Game Boy Advance. Game Boy Color. GameCube? Nintendo 64?? Nintendo Entertainment System???

HNV: YESSS IT WORKED aroseahorseboy: no way man Klickitat_Street: Seriously??

"No no no. No it can't. Really?" She opens N64... Scrolls down through the list until she hits the Ms... there it is.

VRROOOOOM. "Welcome to Mario Kart!"

"FUCK!"

Syrupentine: OMG OMG OMG ButterflyDefect: FAKE FAKE NO WAY Aroseahorseboy: Bea how much did you pay for this game I WANT ONE

Bea's not really listening, she's too engrossed in the DK Rap at the moment. "I, not nearly what it's worth, I can assure you! Wow, thank you, Best Mom Ever! Now look.. don't pirate games, its bad, etc. I should probably say that."

Syrupentine: Wait, that thing doesn't have an analog stick how can it play N64 and GC games???

The answer-- surprisingly well. All the Joy Traveler games have played so simply, Bea hadn't even noticed the analog capacity of the directional pad! "I really don't have a lot of words, this is unbelievable. Pretty much impossible, at least I would have thought so? I'll be honest, I'm not a tech nerd, I just really like playing games, so if you think you have any idea how this crap works.."

"Gonna come back to this one. Many, many more times, methinks"

aroseahorseboy: I wish red mom was MY mom

"I'd say she just topped my upcoming Top 10 Video Game Moms list except I don't think anyone else has played this thing"

Bee52: I can't think of any other moms DueyDecimal: Ms. Pac-Man is a mom, right...?

"Uh, ness's mom, Ms. Pac, and your character's mom from Pokemon.. aaand.. hm, well its a work in progress"

Syrupentine: Hinawa.... *sob* snerd_burglar: nah mama red blows them ALL away DueyDecimal: Weird she's in so many games! Bee52: she's like the host or something MaxForce: Great, horror movies get Elvira, we get an Irish MILF

"You say that like its a bad thing!"

The emulation isn't perfect since there's only so many buttons on that tiny pad; and of course Bea's out of luck if it's a twin-stick game like Panzer Dragoon. But after about fifteen minutes of suggestions from the viewers, she has yet to find a game that isn't included!

"Ok so this all the video games ever and I can only play most of them! I dunno maybe I can figure out some way to hook up another controller with the right buttons but I think I'm set for a while.."

She chomps down on a candy bar, going quiet because it's a really chewy one but also she's deep in thought about what all this means. "I know we want to see everything but let's come back, the Library of Alexandria isn't going anywhere"

Baconnaise: I wonder where the arcade games are though Klickitat_Street: This is some dark shit you're messing with, Bea. MaxForce: There's something called the Switch listed there! I never even heard of it! DueyDecimal: Maybe it's one of those China-exclusive Nintendo consoles? Like the iQue?

"Beg pardon?" She scrolls down the list: Xenoblade 2. Splatoon 2. Super Mario Odyssey. "This isn't even out. None of these games exist yet, do they? WHAT IS THIS MACHINE?!"

aroseahorseboy: HOLY SHIT MARIO MEETS ABE Klickitat_Street: I can't belive they didn't go with "Spla2n"... snerd_burglar: of course it's all sequels, please understand

"This is just too good to be true, I feel like any minute some goons in Mario and Luigi clothes are gonna burst down my door and break my legs here. This must have been made by either a brilliant hacker or someone with the time and resources to make all these on their own."

The first one she chooses is heralded by a singularly beautiful image of the Nintendo logo...then suddenly Redhead pops up in a hard hat. "Oops! You entered the year 2015 in your profile-- This attraction will not be available until 2017. Sorry, but we can't show you a game that hasn't been made yet!"

Klickitat_Street: I knew it Bee52: BOOOO Llord_Kuruku: Lol, Trollmom

"Oh come on, don't go all Mrs. Resetti on me here!" she exclaims. "I mean I don't wanna be ungrateful but its not like I can play 'em anywith.. all right, never mind. Anything else cool on here?"

"Ok hive, let's get right back into the Awesome Companion and explore the next game and hope that last one is still here when we get back!"

[entergamingxp]

New Pokemon Snap Gives Me Hope for More Dormant Pokemon Spin-Offs

June 19, 2020 5:00 PM EST

With New Pokemon Snap, there are more possibilities for old Pokemon titles to gain new life after being dead in the water for so many years.

This week The Pokemon Company announced New Pokemon Snap, the long-awaited sequel to the 1999 original on the Nintendo 64. Having a second entry in the franchise was arguably the most wanted request from the Pokemon community for years, especially during the time of the Wii U where players could have used the Wii U Gamepad as the camera; quite a missed opportunity if I do say so myself.

Nevertheless, with this announcement fans (like myself) have been clamoring for the revival of many other Pokemon spin-offs which may now actually see the light of day. Just like Pokemon Snap, there are many other Pokemon titles that deserve a second chance, including the ones you’ll find below.

Pokemon Pinball

The Pokemon Pinball series is my most beloved Pokemon spin-off. It is in my opinion the definitive version of pinball as we know it. When playing pinball, the objective is relatively simple–get the highest score–but there isn’t much more motivation than that. In Pokemon Pinball, however, you have a more engaging objective: catch all the Pokemon. The first entry of the series released on Game Boy Color in 1999, the same year as Pokemon Snap. Based on the Kanto region of Pokemon Red & Blue, the player’s objective was to catch the original 151 Pokemon. The Pokemon that you could catch would depend on which table you are playing on (Red or Blue) and which location you were at in Kanto, starting from Pallet Town all the way to the Indigo Plateau.

A followup to the original came out in 2003 called Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire, which had a similar structure by allowing you to catch the entire Hoenn Pokedex along with Aerodactyl and the Johto starters Totodile, Cyndaquil, and Chikorita. With currently almost 900 Pokemon in existence, now would be more than an opportune time to have a new entry in the series.

Pokemon Stadium

Similarly to Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium is one of the more beloved Pokemon side series that only got two games before never being seen again. Both games released on the Nintendo 64, but the original Stadium was the most beloved of the two. While it had its own single-player mode where you battled the gym leaders of Kanto, it also had a ton of addictive multiplayer mini-games, like eating different food as Lickitung or copying Clefairy’s directions in the classroom.

Stadium indirectly became the best party game on the N64 (sorry Mario Party and Mario Kart). The sequel, however, just didn’t seem to have as huge of a pull as the first one and sold less than half the units the original did, despite still being a great follow-up. The closest thing to a third title was Pokemon: Battle Revolution, but it was mainly just used for battling trainers with your Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum team in 3D. It would be so great seeing a traditional new game in the Stadium lineup.

Pokemon Conquest

Pokemon Conquest was the franchise’s attempt at creating a tactical-RPG title in its universe. Despite that, it didn’t really grab the attention of Western players due to its strategic nature, to the point where not even the charm of Pokemon could sell it for everyone.

However, after the major success of Fire Emblem: Awakening and even more recently Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I feel like players are more open to the idea now that if a Conquest 2 were to ever come out, that it would do much better than its predecessor. Realistically though, I doubt it will ever come to fruition.

Pokemon Colosseum/XD: Gale of Darkness

Image Credit: GameSpot

Back on the GameCube, The Pokemon Company released the first two 3D Pokemon adventures in Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness. Taking place in the Orre Region, Colosseum follows a trainer named Wes (or whatever you decide to call him) who is trying to stop an organization named Team Cipher who are using “Shadow Pokemon.” These Pokemon are identified by Rui, a girl who joins Wes on his adventure where he can “snag” these Pokemon from trainers. After using them in battle, the creatures can be purified which returns them to their natural state.

XD: Gale of Darkness is technically a sequel where you play as a new trainer named Michael, who uses a newly created “Snag Machine” that allows him to identify the Shadow Pokemon. A cool feature about these games as well is that your Pokemon could be transferred to Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire. This series of games was such a breath of fresh air that once Nintendo released the Switch, I thought that we would finally get a new Pokemon adventure that isn’t of the mainline or Let’s Go series. I doubt at this point that if there was a new title that it would be a continuation of Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness, but I would love a new addition that is similar.

Of course, there are plenty of other known spin-off games that I’m sure that Pokemon fans would love a new game for like Pokemon Puzzle League, Ranger, and Trading Card Game just to name a few, but I feel like the titles I talked about throughout are more popular and beloved than others by fans. There is so much opportunity for The Pokemon Company to bring these different series back from the dead. I hope that we see them do so sometime soon.

June 19, 2020 5:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/new-pokemon-snap-gives-me-hope-for-more-dormant-pokemon-spin-offs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-pokemon-snap-gives-me-hope-for-more-dormant-pokemon-spin-offs

[lordwaffleking]

Stop Holding My Hand And Let Me Masturbate Already

Official review of Pokemon Sun and Moon via Lord Waffle King Dot Com.

www.lordwaffleking.com is still currently down and under construction so I’m just gonna post this here for now.

The Pokemon series has come quite a long way. From the very first games for the Game Boy, all through the many sequels and spin-offs, the world of Pokemon has grown exponentially and touched many, many lives. I’ve been a huge Pokemon guy ever since the first games, and whenever a new one is announced, I’m always nothing less than enthralled.

They’ve been with me through it all, man. When I was learning to read? There’s a lot of reading in Pokemon. When I was learning to make friends? Pokemon was what brought us together. And when I started touching myself for the first time? Yeah, I busted some fat nuts on Pokemon.

And then Pokemon Sun and Moon came along. I followed the news all the way up until release. I reported it all, right here on WWW Dot Lord Waffle King Dot Com. The designs looked great. The game looked perfect. I was sure this would be the greatest one yet, beating out my previous favorite that was Black and White.

I was very, very wrong.

Pokemon Sun and Moon have to be the greatest train-wreck of a Pokemon game I’ve ever played. To simply call the game “bad” wouldn’t quite explain the situation well enough, but I wouldn’t hesitate to call it my least favorite Pokemon game. And it really breaks my heart.

In my time playing Sun and Moon, I lost interest several times. Something that’s never happened to me before in a Pokemon game. I had to force myself to complete it, and only because I wanted to know who all the characters were so I could jerk off to hentai of them.

I mean, you can’t just whack it to a girl you don’t know. What kind of animal does that? Someone that doesn’t respect women, that’s who.

Pokemon games have slowly become more and more bloated over the years, but Sun and Moon are the first to ever truly be weighed down by it. Sun and Moon doesn’t know who it’s catering to anymore, and in an attempt to please everyone, they’ve really only succeeded in providing a clusterfuck of things that really don’t mesh well.

It’s an incredibly ambitious game, don’t get me wrong. Graphics are great for a 3DS game, and the presentation is phenomenal. A great soundtrack like always, and the Alola region has to be one of the best out of all of them. The Pokemon designs are fucking fantastic, all of the characters are likeable and well-developed. And surprisingly, even the story is great. The writing potentially rivals Black and White, actually. There’s real character development and everything. Not just a fat kid that likes to dance. In that sense, I’d actually rank it as one of the best Pokemon games. Possibly the best.

And yet the promising plot and world-building is held back by what I can only assume was corporate meddling on the Pokemon Company’s part to try and make the game appeal to the little shits sucking their glue through a straw because their negligent moms let them play Pokemon Go in the fucking street. Maybe they felt like they had to compete with Yo-Kai Watch and try to make the whole game into one long cartoon episode.

Fuck that shit though.

I wanted to explore Alola. I wanted to catch Pokemon and immerse myself in this world. I wanted a grand adventure. What I got was a special ed class Easter egg hunt. Getting lead by the hand to all the conspicuously placed Easter eggs, and having them all pointed out to me and placed gently in my basket by an adult so that I wouldn’t accidentally shove them up my ass by mistake.

It’s like going to Disney World with gassy Uncle Boris. No, don’t go on ride. Uncle Boris no feel good. Uncle Boris eat too much asparagus. Please, keep walking. We walk around park and go home.

Elsa and Snow White could be flashing their tits and beckoning you to join them on the fucking tea cup ride, but no. Keep walking. Look, there’s Mickey Mouse over there. No, you can’t go say hi to him. That’s not a part of the fucking tour. Keep walking.

The entire first half of the game feels like one long tutorial. It doesn’t at any point let you go to explore on your own time. You go where it tells you, you explore the way it wants you to. Read all of the dialogue, do the battles it presents to you, watch all of the completely unnecessary cutscenes. Why so many cutscenes? Pokemon doesn’t need that many. The cutscenes are done very well, yes. They help to build up the characters and make the emotional impact they deliver in the end that much more powerful. Sure. But the same was accomplished with N in Pokemon Black and White, and it didn’t require stagnating the whole fucking game.

When the action does open up, during that entire first half of the game that spans two of the region’s four islands, it hardly even makes a difference. The islands are designed in such a linear fashion, there really isn’t even a need for the map that takes up the bottom half of the screen. It’s a straight, Point A to Point B map. There are no “dungeons” in the same sense that older Pokemon games have had. Caves, forests, and other places to explore are kept to a minimum, and when there are some, they’re usually presented as part of the game’s “trials” which replace the gyms from older games.

Which would be fine, if it didn’t hold your hand through trials just in case battling a singular wild “Totem” Pokemon with slightly higher stats than usual was too hard for you. It tells you very clearly where to go, what to do, and how to do it. The mini-map on the bottom screen, which is an unfortunate waste of UI space, always has a very clear marker point of where you’re supposed to go. It’ll even offer you little hints. Say, didn’t the professor go that way, you know, where the little red flag is? Gosh, there might be something important there. Let’s go there.

There’s genuinely a point in the game where the map will present a goal for you, and then instead of just letting you go there, you’ll walk out and find that an NPC was out there waiting for you with a brief cutscene telling you which way the mini-map, that’s always on the bottom pointing you in the right direction, wanted you to go. And then it’ll proceed to lead you there, having you follow the NPC all the way to the trial site. You know, in case a giant red flag on the bottom screen was too hard to find.

And that’s after the fucking two island-long tutorial.

This was a big step in making the game autism-proof, I get it. It was to make sure that the generation of kids raised on Angry Birds and fidget spinners could play the game just like everyone else. But there’s no way to turn it the fuck off? I wanna play Pokemon games too. Come on.

Pretty much every older DS Pokemon game used the bottom screen in a better way. Even Pokemon Ranger. I’d rather draw fucking circles than put up with this bullshit. Sure, make the completely redundant mini-map the default. But there’s so much more you could’ve put there.

The incredibly promising Poke Pelago, a touch screen-based way to interact with your Pokemon, is locked away in menus when it could’ve easily been at your fingertips at all times. And on top of that, every time you want to use it, you need to watch an unskippable cutscene of your trainer traveling to the fucking Poke Pelago just to use it.

The touch controls are also fairly sloppy with Poke Pelago, something surprising considering Pokemon’s years of slowly perfecting its touch screen UI. There’s so many tiny sprites on the bottom screen moving around, it’s easy to accidentally tap the wrong thing when you’re just trying to collect some God damned beans.

So many strides have been made in eliminating annoying quirks that the games have had for ages, and yet all the tiny steps towards progress are fucked up by glaring bad design choices.

It’s really sad, it really is. It’s like a Miss America pageant contestant in Pokemon game form. It’s really fucking gorgeous. I’d fuck it. And the script, clearly, had had a lot of work put into it. But in the end, it’s just really fucking stupid. If you asked Sun and Moon what it meant to them to be a Pokemon game, they would ramble on incoherently about Pokemon games bringing people together for ten minutes, and then point to an Alolan form Pokemon and say “Kanto, remember?” You can get your favorite Pokemon from the first games, but now they have a much more exotic penis.

And yet even with the shitty execution, I still felt the emotional climax at the end of the game. Which made it so hard for me to accept how much I hated it. By the end of the game, I wanted to love it, I really did. But now all I feel is the disappointment of how much better it could’ve been if they didn’t butcher it.

A Pokemon Sun and Moon where I get to explore all of the islands without cutscenes every couple steps. Where there aren’t ten different forms of point markers to tell you where you’re supposed to go at any given point, and I can play the game to its fullest without worrying about accidentally overpowering myself. Almost every cutscene ends with someone giving you ten Max Revives. And they heal your Pokemon for you on top of it. There was really no reason to ever use healing items or Pokemon Centers, which are now conveniently located on almost every route now instead of only towns, because everyone would heal you before every major battle anyway. There was a time where I actually used healing items, because I was towards the end of the game. But no, they were wasted. As soon as I approach this powerful, endgame trainer, someone steps in and pitches me an entire medicine cabinet and heals my Pokemon for me.

There’s a difference between “Oh, just turn the Exp. Share off, then it won’t be too easy” and “Oh, just don’t talk to anyone, don’t buy anything, don’t battle too much, don’t explore the miscellaneous side-quests on each route, don’t use the Poke Pelago, turn Exp. Share off, don’t look at your bottom screen, ignore all of the cutscene dialogue, and don’t do any of the StreetPass Festival Plaza shit or whatever. Come on, it’s not too easy”.

It’s like if they made a reality TV show where you have to live in the same house as 8 different grandmas, but try not to get fat from them stuffing you full of food. You can refuse all you want, but they’re gonna get you. Even if you eat only three times a day, you’re gonna die of cardiac arrest. And you’re only allowed to murder one, the rest have to go from natural causes. There’s no way you’ll take home the million-dollar prize. You have better chances of beating the robot from Jeopardy.

Even the obnoxious feature where Pokemon call for help doesn’t do anything to balance the game, it just makes it more of a drag.

“Too easy” or “for casuals” would be the cop out verdict. The truth is that the game is just miserably balanced, relying on an instant gratification-style of gameplay and a slow-paced narrative that makes the game intolerable. The point where things start actually getting good is the brief half hour before it cuts to the credits, and then the game is over before it even starts.

It’s like not being able to get your peepee up and then when it’s finally up you blast your load immediately.

I think a lot of people did not actually like Sun or Moon, despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews. I don’t think a lot of people played it all the way through, actually. It’s a lot like when No Man’s Sky launched, and everyone was pretending to love it until someone said something about it. Several people told me Sun and Moon was just fantastic, and then they’d say “yeah, I’m on the second island now” and then they’d just leave the game for something else.

I think a lot of people just watched all the leaks and then beat off to hentai of the new characters and then just pretended like they finished the game. Not saying that no one at all enjoyed the game, I’m sure a lot of people did. A lot of people could’ve looked past the glaring flaws and loved it for what it was.

That doesn’t stop the fact that it’s still the only Pokemon game I’ve ever played that I didn’t have fun with. And that will be a mark of shame that the game has to wear. I almost wish that all I did was watch the leaks and never play the game. I could’ve lived with the illusion that Pokemon could do no wrong.

But no. I had to be a gentleman and learn the names of all the trainers before looking up hentai of them.

This is why chivalry is fucking dead.

[buytabletsonline]

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After writing up Nintendo’s Wednesday reveal of its new Labo playsets (coming April 20 to the US and Japan and April 27 to Europe), I realized I’d forgotten to add an important word to the article’s introduction: “what.”

More specifically, the drawn-out, question-marked version I should have shouted when the product’s reveal video played out. (“Whaaaaat?!”) I’m a big fan of Nintendo’s physical-toy era in the ’60s and ’70s, back when company legend and Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi came up with engineering wonders like the Ultra Hand and the Ten-Barrel Puzzle. As a result, I was immediately charmed by the physicality and toy-controller possibilities of the reveal video, which included everything from a motorcycle steering chassis to a 13-key piano to a string-loaded fishing rod—all built by players with a mix of pre-cut, pre-marked cardboard, sensing stickers, plastic, string, and more.

But then I began wondering: exactly how does everything work with Nintendo Labo? In particular, what the heck is going on with Labo’s most insane offering: a full-body robot suit?

Player, piano

Understanding how Labo-constructed Toy-Cons will work starts by analyzing this image, which we break down in the text below. The rest of this gallery shows how the Nintendo Labo piano is put together.

Nintendo Labo will combine the Switch console, its Joy-Con controllers, and buildable cardboard sets.

The debut video shows how to put the piano set together. Start with individual, foldable cardboard pieces.

Getting closer.

It’s missing something.

Oh, right. The Switch.

There’s also a slot for a Joy-Con to be inserted, visible here on the left.

Nintendo has not answered precisely how the Labo Robot Kit will work, either in its reveal videos, Labo’s official sites, or hands-on impressions posted by other outlets. With the limited info I’ve gathered, I’m taking it upon myself to offer educated guesses while commenting on why I have a serious case of Labo love.

We do know quite a bit about Labo based on hands-on reports that went live at the same time as Nintendo’s Wednesday video. The Labo Variety Kit was demonstrated at length to various outlets, and the “how” of the Variety Kit’s cardboard piano—which recognizes 13 distinct keys and a number of modulating knobs—was explained as follows by The Verge:

The Joy-Con that slots into the back [of the Labo piano] has a camera, which can see the back of the keys so that it knows which ones you’re pressing and then relays that information to the Switch. The sound-modifying knobs, meanwhile, each have distinctive stripes that are associated with their respective sounds, so that the camera can tell them apart.

To be clearer: the right-side Joy-Con, which ships with every Nintendo Switch, comes with an infrared camera and four additional infrared sensors. These are apparently enough to create Labo’s distinct combination of positional and visual data. When fed by patterns on the cardboard parts and “reflective” stickers, they can individually recognize no less than 14 simultaneous points of interactivity.

We have to wait for more direct access to all of the Labo creations (which Nintendo calls Toy-Cons) to break down exactly how every single one of them works. When we get our hands on Labo later this year, we will do just that. For now, let’s focus on the Labo Robot Kit, which was not shown off during any hands-on press previews—but appeared for long enough in Labo’s debut video to reveal juicy information.

We can start by looking at the Labo video’s footage of the cardboard piano’s assembly. Labo walks its players step-by-step through the process of building a Toy-Con, and it includes see-through 3D models of the construction every step of the way to teach users (assumedly, our world’s future engineers) exactly how this stuff works. By the end, builders have gotten the piano pretty much fully built, at which point they must insert the right-side Joy-Con into the back of the piano, so that its IR camera rig can see the piano’s full innards.

The reveal video shows Labo instructing players to test the piano’s buttons and dials, in order to test the IR sensor. This screen, which includes a touchscreen option for kids to move the camera around and see how the piano is working, actually shows 19 distinct sensing positions, including 13 purple “keys,” a pair of dials (one red, one green) directly above the keys, and four larger boxes. (We still don’t have full information about exactly which of these keys, knobs, and other elements must have sensor-boosting stickers attached.)

This wealth of data, above and beyond a mere 13-key rig, is important as we transition to the Labo Robot Kit.

Go-go Labo rangers

The Labo Robot Pack comes with everything seen here. (We break it down in the text below, along with more thoughts in this gallery.)

Nintendo

Another look at the pack in its construction phase.

As arms and legs move, so do the white strips.

We’re still wondering how exactly the strips’ position relates to real-life movement.

Be a robot.

“Moooom, the back fell off my robot suit again!”

Oh, and of course, this game’s robot TURNS INTO A CAR. The video shows the player bending his knees to transform.

Nintendo’s official Labo Robot Kit site includes images of the full kit’s basic, exterior design. In the first image of the above gallery, the left-side image shows two handheld wands made entirely of cardboard, while two foot clips made of plastic are shown as connected directly to the backpack, not fully extended to the floor. That’s made clearer on the model’s feet on the right-side image. Also in that right-side image, both the handheld and foot-clipped parts are connected to string that runs through the backpack itself.

If we go back to the reveal video, we see a brief shot of the backpack’s exposed innards, before a final piece of cardboard is slapped onto the back. Four apparent levers can be seen, each with a white strip at different levels. We can tell based on the official product image that each limb’s string runs through the top of the cardboard backpack, aligned with each of these levers. As you move an arm or a leg, each white strip moves up and down.

The backpack’s back-side flap of cardboard includes a holder for the right-side Joy-Con, and again, its IR sensor points at the innards, including these white strips. Should there be any doubt that these are the backpack’s primary trackable points of data, notice the video’s footage of the Robot Kit’s accompanying game. Its robot hero has four visible levers on its back, mirroring the same design that players wear.

Additionally, the non-camera Joy-Con is mounted to a small cardboard-and-plastic headset, which a player wears for some sort of control in the game itself. This could be meant for head-tracked camera movement in the game, or for directing a player’s motion or attacks. But it’s definitely not up there just to make a kid look silly.

One question remains: what other, finer points of data might Labo’s Robot Kit be equipped to handle, a la the cardboard piano’s wealth of sensing data? The fact that Nintendo didn’t demonstrate a working version to the press could mean that there’s more to the kit; the best evidence to support this guess is the backpack’s use of three large holes on both its left and right sides. These may accommodate additional connections, either by string or some other doo-dad. There’s also the possibility, of course, that this four-lever system is not yet optimized enough for public testing.

Coming soon: a “more-power” glove?

Some of Labo’s concepts were teased in Wednesday’s video without an accompanying product announcement, like this steering wheel and pedal combo.

What’s really exciting about the steering wheel is this sticker-sensor array, which has no less than ten points of data for the Switch’s Joy-Con IR sensor to translate into a control system.

The rest of this gallery includes other teased Labo Toy-Cons that don’t appear to have an announced release yet. First: a huge joystick with a wedged cardboard base, for the sake of 360-degree flexing.

A bird with flappable wings.

A camera with rotatable lens. (Pokemon Snap 2, maybe?)

And a big pistol that resembles a flare gun.

Either way, the beauty of the IR-tracked backpack is its sheer design flexibility. If you were asked to build a fully tracked four-limb robot suit from scratch, meant to interact with a video game system, you might imagine no less than four hardware-connected sensing rigs to track basic movement—or more if you want to account for, say, ball-and-socket joints. But Nintendo will only employ one IR sensor to record four distinct limbs’ movement. There’s work to be done to engineer the rest of the physical rig, of course, but this “single-sensor” system saves users the trouble of, say, ordering laser- and wire-connected parts from Alibaba.

That’s a lot of design modularity for Labo’s future. Labo essentially declares that the Nintendo Switch already includes enough sensors and electronics. From there, Nintendo, or its fans, can engineer entirely different build-it-yourself kits based on this base with nothing but cardboard and stickers. The possibilities are wild. I’ve already imagined one idea, based on my own VR experiences. With an angled, wrist-strapped glove, Labo 2.0 could aim an IR sensor at a single human hand and, at the very least, track the basic movement of individual digits, if not the fingers’ bending at knuckles. (A second Joy-Con could join the party to determine angle and rotation, which might deliver convincing spatial hand tracking.)

Our last image gallery, directly above, includes five Toy-Cons that do not appear to have announced releases yet. Since it’s advertising these preview concepts early, Nintendo clearly sees a future in the Labo line. Its control possibilities really could go in as many wacky directions as I’ve just guessed with my own Toy-Con Glove idea.

Already before launch, Nintendo’s Labo approach feels like a much better path forward in the gimmick-filled control world than what’s come before. The era of locked-down, $90-and-up control peripherals has long passed. Players generally do not want to be saddled with a pricey, space-filling control mechanism that only works for a few games—a fact that spelled doom for everything from Kinect to Guitar Hero. The Switch has succeeded, in part, by giving players a familiar suite of controls to play as they see fit, either at home or on the go. The system also just so happens to have just enough sensing tech built in to accommodate crazy control styles… for those who want to buy add-on kits and construct their own Toy-Cons. Everyone wins. It’s brilliant, even before it exists.

Listing image by Nintendo

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