Remember when the Nintendo Labo VR kit launched and a small handful of Switch games, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Super Mario Odyssey – received unlikely Labo VR mode updates? We might not have spent hours exploring Hyrule with Nintendo’s VR goggles on, but we certainly enjoyed the novelty of playing in other games with that largely cardboard peripheral.
We recently took a look at how Team Nintendo Life will remain active in early 2021, but even if we are not Pumping iron or doing burpees in the living room, we would welcome any excuse to get up from the couch while also playing our ‘normal’ games – anything to keep the old blood circulating! With certain regions around the world entering a new lockdown or on the brink of new restrictions to combat the third wave of the pandemic, we are looking for a little bit of novelty that we can find today. Fortunately, we know a company that is a specialist in that field, and we’ve been thinking about another Nintendo peripheral that many of us have access to: namely the Ring-Con that came with Ring Fit Adventure.
While some (but not all) Team NL have used it on a daily basis for the past year, we wouldn’t mind trying it out with other Switch games, just like we did with the Labo goggles. To that end, we’ve come up with some ideas for Ring-Con compatible modes that Nintendo could potentially add to its Switch library with one or two cheeky updates.
Are these suggestions completely serious? Why yes, everyone is an undisputed winner and Nintendo would be fools – FOOLS! – not to rush into implementing everything to keep us busy during the next wave of social detachment and confinement. *
So let’s see what Ring-Con modes for other Switch games we came up with …
* Jokes! With the exception of a few cool ideas, they are all pretty dumb … OR ARE THEY?
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo SPD
While it’s possible to play VR mode in Breath of the Wild indefinitely, spending hours with the Labo goggles on our face isn’t how we want to play it. Still, it was a fun novelty to experiment with, and we think a small Ring-Con implementation would work much better.
The most obvious mode would be to use the controller as your bow – Link’s Crossbow Training 2, anyone? We’re thinking of a minigame accessed through an NPC on the map where you pull the ring to charge and release an arrow to shoot at a target – Octorok, Keese, balloons, whatever.
Alternatively (and as suggested by tough NL employee Gonçalo Lopes), how about races against NPCs or long-distance marathon courses on the tracks and trails built throughout the kingdom? By holding the Ring-Con and jogging to move – just like you do to run around the world in Ring Fit Adventure – you can race people or maybe deliver mail across the kingdom in a variety of side missions to get some new swag or the Ring to use as a weapon. Maybe the Ring Fit outfit?
Hey, if Link has a Nintendo Switch T-shirt in his inventory, there’s no reason he couldn’t earn other cross-promotional gear as well! Throw in a beautiful sunset and who can resist the temptation to jog on a cliff?
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Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo
Wait for it … you never guess this one. The Ring-Con … is a steering wheel. Unknown! Genius! Revolutionary!
This has of course been tried and even works to some extent. Unfortunately, it is difficult to float or fire objects while the Joy-Con is securely locked to the top of your Ring-Con in a mighty Con-fluence or Con-troller. If Nintendo patched an official Ring-Con mode Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, it would take at least some motion-based shaking or squeezing to activate items.
Yet this is probably the easiest and most plausible of all our ideas.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo software technology
Splatoon 2 has plenty of weapons already, and we’re sure Sheldon could get his hands on a Ring-Con-esque shield that soaked up paint while being lifted and fired it back at enemy inklings when pressed into it. Navigating the world at any speed would be difficult, so this would probably have to break out in its own mode in a smaller arena where everyone had a Ring-Con. Fun would then follow.
Or how about some sort of PvE mode where the (massively OP) Ring-Con player is stationary and the others have to work together to take them out? Pah, this game developer is simple. The next!
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Next Level Games
Luigi trades his Poltergust G-00 for a Ring-Con with a funny name the Vacuum Screamer, something like that – that sucks up absolutely everything in a big jet when you pull it and blows ghosts across the room when you squeeze it.
Again, simple navigation could be a problem outside of Ring Fit’s on-rails world, so this might work better as an optional co-op mode; the Ring-Con player sucks up all the money while sitting in the hideouts of the main player who takes out the ghosts and moves normally.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Camelot
Quiet please. Tennis rackets are so 19th century – wouldn’t it be more fun if you used a large ring disk to blow floating balls at each other using air blasts?
It would probably work better as an optional ‘Volleyball’ mode or something, maybe with one player controlling the character’s body on the field while the Ring-Con player focused on taking shots. Anyway, it’s something we would definitely boot and play for, oooh, at least four or five minutes!
