POWER GLOVE

The 'Power Glove' (1989) is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System designed by the team of Grant Goddard and Sam Davis for Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, made by Mattel in the United States and PAX in Japan. Contrary to popular belief, Nintendo was not involved in the design or release of this accessory, though it was an officially licensed product. It was the first peripheral interface controller to recreate human hand movements on a television or computer screen, and it proved to be a winner with the general public as almost 100,000 were made and sold in the US alone.^[1]
The glove had a traditional D-pad on the forearm as well as a program button and buttons labeled 0-9. A person would hit the program button and a numbered button to do various things (such as increase or decrease the firing rate of the A and B buttons). Along with the controller, a gamer could move his or her hand in various movements to control a character on-screen.
It was based on the patented technology of the VPL Dataglove, but with many modifications that allowed it to be used with slow hardware and sold at an affordable price. Where the Dataglove could detect yaw, pitch and roll, used fiber optic sensors to detect finger flexure and had a resolution of 256 positions (8 bits) per 5 fingers, the Power Glove could only detect roll, and used sensors coated with conductive ink yielding a resolution of 4 positions (2 bits) per 4 fingers. ^[2] This allowed the Power Glove to store all the finger flexure information in a single byte. ^[3]
Only two games were released with specific features for use with the Power Glove, ''Super Glove Ball'', and ''Bad Street Brawler'', a difficult to control beat 'em up, playable with the standard NES controller, but allowing exclusive moves with the glove. These two games were branded as part of the "Power Glove Gaming Series". Two more games, ''Glove Pilot'' and ''Manipulator Glove Adventure'', were announced but never released. Super Glove Ball was never released in Japan. Since no games ever retailed in Japan, the Power Glove was sold only as an alternative controller. This decision damaged sales and eventually caused PAX to declare bankruptcy.
Many other games including: ''Super Mario Bros'', ''Metroid'', ''Castlevania'', ''Contra'', ''Rad Racer'' and many other titles used the glove's abilities to play the game.
To jump in ''Super Mario Bros'' and ''Metroid'', you flicked your arm up quickly, ''Contra'' and ''Castlevania'' made you bend your pointing finger to shoot, and ''Rad Racer'' required miming the motions of steering the wheel of a car.
One criticism of the power glove was in the way the glove interacted with Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!. While a glove seemed to be an intuitive interface for a boxing game, the limitations on the detection method for the device was a complication for this game. While punching was a natural motion (moving the glove towards the television), the return motion was set to be used for the super punch. The result of this setup was that the user would very quickly expend all their super punches without being able to save them for the most opportune times.

Contents

Trivia

Compatible games

References

External links

Trivia

★ Isaiah Triforce Johnson wore a Power Glove when he became the first person to purchase a Wii in North America. Nintendo's President Reggie Fils-Aime was there to shake his gloved hand.^[4]

★ The Japanese Singer Momoi Haruko often is photographed wearing the Power Glove, for album covers or other occasions.^[5]

★ In the 1989 movie ''The Wizard'' the character Lucas is seen using the Power Glove to play Rad Racer. In a memorable line from the movie Lucas professes "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad."

★ In the Nightmare on Elm Street sequel , Freddy Krueger sends one of the kids into a videogame and modifies his own glove to resemble a low-tech version of the power glove. He remarks "Now I'm playin with power!".

★ The Power Glove is reviewed by the Angry Video Game Nerd in his series of video game reviews.

Compatible games

★ ''Alpha Mission''

★ ''Anticipation''

★ ''Bad Street Brawler''

★ ''Baseball''

★ ''Bases Loaded''

★ ''Blades of Steel''

★ ''Blaster Master''

★ ''Bubble Bobble''

★ ''Castlevania''

★ ''

★ ''Contra''

★ ''Deadly Towers''

★ ''Defender II''

★ ''Donkey Kong''

★ ''Donkey Kong Jr.''

★ ''Double Dragon''

★ ''Double Dribble''

★ ''Gauntlet''

★ ''Gradius''

★ ''Gun.Smoke''

★ ''Gyruss''

★ ''Ice Hockey''

★ ''Iron Tank''

★ ''Jackal (video game)''

★ ''Joust''

★ ''Kid Icarus''

★ ''Knight Rider''

★ ''Kung-Fu Heroes''

★ ''Zelda 2:adventure of link''

★ ''Life Force''

★ ''Metal Gear''

★ ''Metroid''

★ ''Mickey Mousecapade''

★ ''Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!''

★ ''A Nightmare on Elm Street''

★ ''Operation Wolf''

★ ''Platoon''

★ ''RBI Baseball''

★ ''R.C. Pro-Am''

★ ''Rad Racer''

★ ''Racket Attack''

★ ''Rampage''

★ ''Robo Warrior''

★ ''Rygar''

★ ''Seicross''

★ ''Sesame Street 1-2-3''

★ ''Star Force''

★ ''Super Mario Bros.''

★ ''Super Glove Ball''

★ ''Superman''

★ ''Top Gun''

★ ''Xenophobe''

★ ''Xevious''

References

1. http://www.ageinc.com/tech/index.html
2. http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/glove.htm
3. http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/1993/proceedings/Glove~1.htm
4. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,230561,00.html
5. http://avexmovie.jp/lineup/momo-i/index.html

External links

★ Abrams/Gentile Entertainment

★ The Angry Nintendo Nerd's review of the Powerglove
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