Power Glove

The Power Glove is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System designed by the legendary team of Grant Goddard and Sam Davis for Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, made by Mattel in the United States and PAX in Japan. The peripheral originally retailed for $100 (USD).

The Power Glove was unique in the fact that it was a glove instead of the normal control pad. 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 a 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. This allowed the Power Glove to store all the finger flexure information in a single byte.

Only two games were released with specific features for use with the Power Glove, Super Glove Ball, a 3D Breakout clone, and Bad Street Brawler, a difficult to control Double Dragon clone, playable with the standard NES controller, but allowing exclusive moves with the glove. 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 hurt sales and eventually caused PAX to declare bankruptcy.

The glove was somewhat difficult to use; in order for the glove to register with the ultrasonic sensors, one had to keep their knuckles pointing at them at all times. In addition, since each finger had 4 positions, it is difficult to have disparate fingers in different positions simultaneously. Thus, while it was possible to control 16 different states simultaneously, most people have difficulty keeping the ring and index fingers straight, while bending the middle finger.

While the Power Glove was never a popular input device for the NES, it later gained tremendous popularity among virtual reality enthusiasts as a wired glove. This was mostly due to its low cost and high availability. In 1996, Abrams/Gentile Entertainment was expected to release a new and better Power Glove, designed specifically for the PC, but the product never materialized. Later, they designed a product codenamed Gauntlet that went on to become Essential Reality's P5 Glove.

In popular culture

The power glove made an infamous appearance in the movie The Wizard, where Lucas Barton (Jimmy's rival) was seen playing Rad Racer using the device as a sort of remote control, turning his hand as if gripping a steering wheel, which of course was not how the Glove worked. Afterwards, he proclaims, "I love the Power Glove! It's so bad!" which became a popular quote among video game aficionados.
HORSE The Band samples this exclamation as well as Barton saying "The Power Glove" in the intro and outro of the song Cutsmen, on their 2003 release "R. Borlax".
Freddy Krueger uses a "Power Glove" (in reality, his own signature razor-tipped glove with various lights and buttons attached) to kill Breckin Meyer's character, whom he had trapped in a video game, in 1991's The Final Nightmare. An article in Nintendo Power magazine, released after the film, featured an interview with "Krueger" actor Robert Englund, who claimed he had installed "retractable blades" on his own Power Glove at home.
In the movie Beethoven one of the main characters is seen playing Super Mario Bros. 3 with the power glove.
The "Power Glove" is the name of a Legend of Zelda item that first appeared in the The Adventure of Link.
Episode 5 of the Flash TV show featured a thinly disguised Power Glove used as a prop.
One of the villains in Pure Pwnage wields a Power Glove.
In Curse of Darkness, the best Knuckle-type weapon that can be created is called the Force Glove, which closely mimics the Power Glove's appearance, and the ingame description states that it's "so powerful, it might damage the user's hands".
In the cartoon series G.I. Joe Sigma Six, the character Heavy Duty is armed with "Power Gloves" that are used to enhance user strength.
In The Boondocks TV show featured a glove shaped tazer called the "Black Power Glove" that closely resembled the eponymous peripheral in the episode "Let's Nab Oprah".
The accessory was used by Information Society in the videoclip Think.

Compatible games

Partial List

External links

Nintendo hardware | Nintendo Entertainment System | Game controllers | Virtual reality | Gloves

Power Glove

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In popular culture

Compatible games

See also

External links