{"id":19071,"date":"2019-05-31T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T00:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=19071"},"modified":"2019-05-12T00:10:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T00:10:11","slug":"nintendo-labo-vr-kit-goggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/31\/nintendo-labo-vr-kit-goggles\/","title":{"rendered":"Nintendo Labo VR Kit: Goggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nintendo made a splash last year with their Nintendo Labo kits.\u00a0 These building toys had you folding carboard around your Nintendo Switch game system and controllers to play games in totally new ways.\u00a0 TIME Magazine even named Nintendo Labo one of the best inventions of last year, and even I awarded it my Game of the Year in 2018 as well!\u00a0 And now Nintendo has done it again with the Labo VR Kit.\u00a0 This kit lets you build VR goggles and accessories to play virtual reality games and activities on your Nintendo Switch.\u00a0 You can get two different versions: one that lets you just build the goggles and blaster, and one that lets you build those and many more.\u00a0 Naturally I got the bigger set, and we\u2019ll look at each thing you can build separately, starting with the VR goggles first.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a bigger picture of the box for the Labo VR Kit. \u00a0You can build the goggles, camera, elephant, bird, wind pedal, and blaster.<\/p>\n

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Just like the other Labo sets, it also comes with a game that has three different parts.\u00a0 In \u201cMake,\u201d they have animated instructions on how to build and fold each of the accessories.\u00a0\u00a0 In \u201cPlay,\u201d you play the games that go with the things you build.\u00a0 And in \u201cDiscover,\u201d you learn how the toys work.\u00a0 So it\u2019s truly educational.\u00a0 One good thing about the VR games is that even I can play most of them.\u00a0 You see, I\u2019ve been blind in my left eye since birth, and can\u2019t see 3-D effects in games and movies that use them.\u00a0 But I can still play the Labo VR stuff just fine, for the most part.\u00a0 They even explain how people with two eyes can see 3-D effects in the Labo Discover section, and did a good job explaining how it all works.<\/p>\n

Each kit in the Labo series costs about $70 to $80 each.\u00a0 While that sounds pretty expensive, and it is, there are some things you should consider.\u00a0 Other comparable educational toys do cost about as much, and these kits do include a game, which runs about 50 bucks anyway.\u00a0 Plus the cardboard is very high quality and is printed and perforated.\u00a0 I used to work in printing so I know how expensive that can be!\u00a0 So if you look at it that way, it doesn\u2019t seem so bad.\u00a0 But I can still understand why people would think this is a hefty chunk of change anyway.<\/p>\n

The first thing that you should build is the VR goggles, naturally.\u00a0 They have plenty of warnings in the game and on the box and lenses themselves to not look directly into the sun or use the magnifying glass lens to start fires using the sun. \u00a0There were so many warnings that it was almost silly, but in today\u2019s sue-happy society, I guess Nintendo had to do that.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a picture of the lenses when you take them out of the box that had warning stickers on them, too!<\/p>\n

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And here are the goggles all built.\u00a0 There is no strap to attach them to your head, you just have to hold them the whole time.\u00a0 You\u2019d think this would be a problem, but it really wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 You toggle the Switch screen to VR mode and slip it in the slot in front of the lenses and you can start playing.<\/p>\n

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Even with just the goggles themselves, you can play dozens of mini VR games and activities.\u00a0 I won\u2019t go over them all, because there are just so many.\u00a0 But a lot of them remind me of what could\u2019ve been a WarioWare VR title, and made me remember an article I wrote a couple of years ago about what VR games I would like to see<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 When I wrote that article, I had no idea that Nintendo\u2019s first foray into VR since the Virtual Boy would require cardboard!<\/p>\n

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There are also a bunch of VR videos you can watch with the goggles.\u00a0 I wish these were 360 degree viewed like the games, but they\u2019re still pretty neat.\u00a0 A lot of them have you looking at different animals, magic tricks, or eating food.\u00a0 But my favorite is one where you peer inside a Virtual Boy and watch the first few seconds of the Mario\u2019s Tennis title screen!\u00a0 Makes me wonder if they could do a Virtual Boy virtual console with this!<\/p>\n

There are a couple of small accessories that you can build that we\u2019ll go over here, too, since they\u2019re so little.\u00a0 The first is a pinwheel that you attach to the goggles to play some peashooting and inflating games.\u00a0 Pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around.\u00a0 Look at my pinwheel and see what I\u2019ve found.\u00a0 Sorry, us 80\u2019s kids have to sing that when pinwheels are involved.\u00a0 Anyway, the JoyCon controller with the IR camera attaches to this one, and it views reflective tape that spins around as you blow on it, and that\u2019s how it knows you\u2019re blowing.<\/p>\n

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One disadvantage to the VR kit is that nobody can watch you play.\u00a0 That\u2019s where this viewing screen holder that you build comes in.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t used it yet, so I don\u2019t know how it works, but here it is all built.\u00a0 There is one more little accessory that you can build, but we\u2019ll go over it when we talk about the VR Camera next time.<\/p>\n

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And that\u2019s all I have to say about the goggles.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever played any type of VR before, you probably won\u2019t be impressed with the VR tech in the Labo kit.\u00a0 But considering that most VR games cost hundreds of dollars at the cheapest, and thousands of bucks at the most expensive, you\u2019re getting what you pay for here with VR for under a hundred bucks.\u00a0 So it\u2019s a pretty neat little intro to VR otherwise.\u00a0 Next time we\u2019ll talk about the VR Camera you can build!<\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the Labo kits are educational, they\u2019re very good for kids.\u00a0 But not ALL kids.\u00a0 It\u2019s best for older kids as the things you build can be pretty complicated, and while the cardboard you use is of very high quality, it can break.\u00a0 You can order replacement sheets of cardboard on Nintendo\u2019s web site, but even so, I would still say this is best for older kids who love to build things and enjoy seeing how they work.\u00a0 Also they recommend that very young kids not even use VR or 3-D that much, I guess because of their developing eyes.\u00a0 Reading skill is also involved, and kids would need to be mature enough to take care of their toys.\u00a0 The Labo kits may seem pricey at $50 to $80 bucks, but I really think they\u2019re well worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nintendo made a splash last year with their Nintendo Labo kits.\u00a0 These building toys had you folding carboard around your Nintendo Switch game system and controllers to play games in totally new ways.\u00a0 TIME Magazine even named Nintendo Labo one of the best inventions of last year, and even I awarded it my Game of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19073,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19071\/revisions\/19073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}