This Gaming Special Feature is Presented in Collaboration with Nintendo of America…
When the Nintendo Labo Kits were first introduced earlier this year their tagline was “Make. Play. Discover”. Now, with the new Labo Vehicle Kit coming out on September 24th, these words will take on new meaning. We recently were given the opportunity to attend the pre-launch event for the new Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit (Toy-Con 03) in New York City where my daughter and I were able to drive, fly and dive with our on-screen avatars.
We arrived at the Hotel Langdon and were immediately greeted with the “Make. Play. Discover” tagline at the check-in table. Soon we were led into a room where there were four stations set up for each attendee to get up-close-and-personal with the Vehicle Kit. We were given a brief overview of the new kit and shown an introductory video showing the kit in action. Once the video was done, we were all ready to build one of the necessary items to start our adventure: a key.
If you are new to the Nintendo Labo kits, they are sheets of perforated cardboard that have certain designs on them that you punch out as you follow the on-screen instructions to build your item. We followed along with the directions and made a key that will operate our car, plane and submarine. Switching from one vehicle to the next is quick and easy and there is no lag on the screen when you do it. It was pretty cool to see my daughter drive around in a jeep, then transform the jeep into a plane and fly around the area.
The Labo Vehicle Kit modes we played were the Adventure mode, Battle Mode and Slot Car. Adventure mode is the mode we spent the most time in and there are some fun missions to complete. One of the missions we tried out was finding the plastic cows that have wandered away from their pens and return them. Each cow we grabbed had something funny or quirky to say about us helping him or her get back which had my daughter and me laughing out loud.
The battle mode is a simple “best out of three” tournament where you use huge fists to fight off your opponent along with the environment itself. My daughter’s “Circular defense” helped her knock out the computer opponent pretty easily. The final mode we played was Slot Car, which was much harder than it seemed. Slot Car is a four-person race where all you use to maneuver you car is the Labo Pedal that you build. Now while this may sound easy, if you are pressing the pedal too hard you might just fly off the course. We raced against fellow blogger, Jeff Bogle and his daughter from OWTK in this mode and it was funny seeing our tiny cars fly off the track as we tried to beat each other to the finish line.
The last thing that we saw – that will be great for the DIY crowd – is the Toy-Con Garage. As mentioned before, Slot Cars is a four player race where you use four Labo Pedals to race against your friends and family, but what if you have only one pedal? In the Toy-Con Garage you can see instructions on how to build your own with household items like sponges and binders along with other “hacks” to expand your Labo Kit experience.
The Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit arrives in stores on September 14th and is available for pre-order now via retailers such as GameStop and Amazon (both affiliates of this site).
