Nintendo Labo Creators Contest winners announced

Nintendo Australia have announced the winners of the Nintendo Labo Creators Contest, which was open across Australia and New Zealand, with three levels of entry, based on age. Each winner will receive a money-can’t-buy prize: a Nintendo Switch console with a special Nintendo Labo design. What makes the competition even more exciting, is that the Teen/Adult group was a tie, with two Switch consoles given away.

If you think this was voted on by the folks here in Australia, you would be wrong as it was the Labo developers in Japan that voted on the winners, how cool is that. You can watch each entry below, to see them in action.

First up the Kids category, which was won by Jamie from New Zealand, with his Elephant Marble Game. Jamie had this to say about this entry:

“I created my own Toy-Con, get all five marbles in the hoop to win.”

The developers had this to say on Jamie’s entry:

“You’ve done an excellent job inventing this marble game with Toy-Con! The elephant was a great idea and makes the game really appealing to look at! You’ve done a great job using the different Joy-Con features: the IR sensor to detect whether the marbles went into the elephant, and HD Rumble to first release the marbles from the dispenser. Your idea to throw marbles into the back of the elephant is novel and we’d love to try it out ourselves!”

For the Teen/Adult group, first place came in as a tie, with two winners. The developers decided that they couldn’t decide on a single winner, check out what they said below.

“We were very impressed with a number of the finalists and the quality of their entries in the Teens/Adults category for Nintendo Labo Creators Contest AUNZ, and spent a long time determining an overall winner. It was so much fun to go through all of them, but quite tough to decide on the winner. After careful consideration however, we decided the first prize winner in this category to be a draw between the Toy-Con Marionette and Master Cycle Zero.”

The first winner is Nathan from Australia with his Toy-Con Marionette. Nathan had this to say on his entry

“I am submitting a Toy-Con creation I’m calling the “Toy-Con Marionette”. This Toy-Con works as a puppet you manipulate with wires with a Joy-Con in each of the puppet’s hand to detect hand movement, and a Joy-Con R inside its head to detect when its mouth moves. It is painted to look like everyone’s favourite moustachioed mascot because I couldn’t resist the pun. To demonstrate the functionality of the Toy-Con Marionette, I created a simple dancing game and singing game in Toy-Con Garage. To play the dancing game, you move each of the hands to match one of three positions that is generated pseudo-randomly. The singing game uses the position of the puppet’s right hand to control the pitch and the movement of its mouth flap to control the volume.”

Again, the developers had this to say on this winner:

“Combining a marionette with Joy-Con to create an entirely new controller is a novel idea and looks incredibly fun! You haven’t just made a game that detects the movements of the Mario-nette, you’ve even made a second one that detects the opening & closing of the mouth too, to create not one, but two games where you match the movements to what’s on screen. It’s fantastic! You’ve made superb use of the IR sensors and produced a masterpiece that truly captures the spirit of Nintendo LABO. We’re also really taken with your naming sense too!”

The second winner in the Teen/Adult group was Jordan from Australia, with his Master Cycle Zero. He described his entry as follows:

“I am submitting a custom decorated Motorbike Joy-Con. The Toy-Con is a 1:1 replica of the Master Cycle Zero from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The player can sit on the bike and play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe using the base functionality of the Motorbike Toy-Con. I was inspired to build it when I saw both the Master Cycle Zero and Labo Support added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Thanks to the sturdy frame, the Toy-Con can be ridden, and the player can play Mario Kart 8 in Labo mode. In order to get the scale of the bike right, I took screenshots from my Switch and blew them up to a 1:1 scale. From there I cut out pieces and used them as reference art, similarly to how real 3D models are made for games. The whole process took over 100 hours to build, and I loved every second of it.”

The developers had this to say on this incredible creation:

“We were completely blown away by the sheer scale, complexity, and faithfulness of this life-size reproduction of the Master Cycle Zero. If that wasn’t enough, it has a headlight, and even includes a customised Toy-Con Motorbike, so you can ride exactly the same motorbike in-game too! We’d love to take it for a spin!!”

Many congratulations to the three winners and if you entered, be sure to send us some photos of your submission, we would love to see what you created.