Remember when the Nintendo Labo VR Kit was launched and a small handful of Switch games – including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, en Super Mario Odyssey – unlikely to receive Labo VR updates? We may not have spent hours exploring Hyrule with the Nintendo VR glasses held to our faces, but we certainly enjoyed the novelty of playing in other games with that mostly cardboard edge.
We recently watched Team Nintendo Life remain active at the beginning of 2021, but even when we do not If we do iron pumping or burpees in the living room, we would welcome any excuse to get up from the couch while also playing our ‘normal’ games – anything to get the blood circulating! As certain regions around the world enter a new exclusion or are on the verge of new restrictions to combat the third wave of the pandemic, we are looking for any bit of novelty we can find these days. Luckily, we know of a company that is a specialist in the field, and we thought of another Nintendo peripheral that many of us have access to: the Ring-Con that comes with Ring Fit Adventure.
Although some (but not all) Team NL have been using it daily for the past year or so, we would not mind trying it out with other Switch games, just like with the Labo glasses. To that end, we brainstormed ideas for Ring-Con compatible modes that Nintendo could add to its Switch library with a brutal update or two.
Are these suggestions completely serious? Why yes, everyone’s a rock face, winner and Nintendo would be foolish – FOOL! – not to rush everyone to implement our entertainment during the next wave of social distance and childbirth. *
So let’s look at what Ring-Con modes we’ve been dreaming of for other Switch games …
* Jokes! With the exception of a few fun ideas, it’s pretty simple … OR ARE THEY?
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo SPD
While it’s indefinitely possible to play the VR mode in Breath of the Wild, this is not how we want to play it for fixing hours with the Labo glasses on our face. It was a fun novelty to experiment with and we think a little Ring-Con implementation will work much better.
The most obvious way is to use the controller as your bow – Link’s Crossbow Training 2, anyone? We think of a mini-game obtained via an NPC on the map where you pull on the ring to load an arrow and shoot at a target – Octorok, Keese, balloons, whatever.
Alternatively (and as suggested by stalwart NL contributor Gonçalo Lopes), how about racing against NPCs or long-distance marathon tracks on the tracks and routes across the kingdom? If you hold the Ring-Con and jog to move – just like you want to run the world in Ring Fit Adventure – you can race against people or perhaps deliver mail throughout the kingdom in a myriad of missions around a new swag or the Call to use as a weapon. The Ring Fit outfit, perhaps?
Hey, if Link has a Nintendo Switch t-shirt in his stock, there’s no reason he can not earn other cross-promotion equipment either! Throw in a beautiful sunset and who can resist jogging on a cliff?
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Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo
Wait for it … you will never guess this one. The Ring-Con … is a steering wheel. Unknown! Genius! Revolutionary!
Of course, it has been tried, and even works to some degree. Unfortunately, it is difficult to drive or fire items while the Joy-Con is tightly locked at the top of your Ring-Con in a tremendous confluence of the controller. If Nintendo were to launch an official Ring-Con mode Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, at least it will need to be motion-based shaken or pinched to activate items.
Of all our ideas, this is probably the easiest to implement and most likely.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo Software Technology
Splatoon 2 already has a lot of weaponry, and we’m sure Sheldon could get his hands on a Ring-Con-like shield that sucked up paint as it was lifted and blown back on the enemy inks when pressed. It’s hard to navigate through the world with any ominousness, so it’s likely to have to erupt in its own mode in a smaller arena where everyone had a Ring-Con. There would be fun then.
Alternatively, what about some sort of PvE mode where the (massive OP) Ring-Con player stands still and the others have to work together to take it down? Pah, this game dev stuff is easy. Following!
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Next level games
Luigi swaps his Poltergust G-00 for a Ring-Con with a funny name – the Vacuum Screamer, something like that – which absorbs absolutely everything in a large radius when you pull it and the spirits in the room explode when you push.
Again, simple navigation can be a problem outside the on-rails world of Ring Fit, so it may work better than an optional co-op mode; the Ring-Con player sucks up all the money while sitting on the shoulders of the main player brushing the ghosts and moving around as normal.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Camelot
Silence please. Tennis racket is so 19th century – wouldn’t it be nicer if you used a big ring-disc thing to blow floating balls on each other with gusts of wind?
It would probably work better than an optional ‘Volleyball’ mode or something, maybe with one player controlling the character’s body on the court while the Ring-Con player focuses on making shots. Either way, this is something we will definitely stand for, oooh, at least four or five minutes!
