Power Glove
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Power Glove 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. Additional development was accomplished through the efforts of Jaron Lanier, a virtual reality pioneer responsible for the DataGlove[1] who had made a failed attempt at a similar design for Nintendo earlier[2]. The Power Glove was originally released in 1989. Though it was an officially licensed product, Nintendo was not involved in the design or release of this accessory.
The Power Glove was the first peripheral interface controller to recreate human hand movements on a television or computer screen, and was commercially successful as almost 100,000 were made and sold in the U.S. alone.[3] However, it is often derided by gamers due to its imprecise nature of controls, and the fact that basic actions such as jumping or using an item may be very difficult or impossible to pull off reliably.[citation needed]
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[edit] Overview
[edit] Layout
The glove had traditional NES controller buttons 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.
[edit] How it worked
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. Whereas 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 five fingers, the Power Glove could only detect roll, and used sensors coated with conductive ink yielding a resolution of four positions (2 bits) per four fingers.[4] This allowed the Power Glove to store all the finger flexure information in a single byte.[5] However, it appears that the fingers actually feed an analog signal to the microprocessor on the Power Glove. The microprocessor converts the analog signal into two bits per finger.
[edit] Similarities with the Wii Remote
The Power Glove has been compared to the later Wii Remote, a similar controller for Nintendo's most recent home console, the Wii. While they have obvious differences, they have the similar function of using motion control.[6]
[edit] Games
Only two games were released with specific features for use with the Power Glove, Super Glove Ball, and Bad Street Brawler, a 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". However, 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.
Two more games, Glove Pilot and Manipulator Glove Adventure, were announced but never released. Another unreleased game, Tech Town or Tektown, was a virtual puzzle solving game in which the player moved a robotic hand around a deserted space station type of setting, using the glove to open doors and to pick up and use tools. It could be seen in a sneak peek in the Official Power Glove Game Player's Gametape (Vol. 1 No. 9), as "New Game Available Spring 1991".
Games without specific support could also be played by inputting codes that sets a control scheme for the glove on its keypad.
[edit] Reception
Screwattack called it the 4th worst game peripheral, because of the difficulty to make any movement.[7]
[edit] In popular culture
[edit] Freddy's Dead
Freddy can be seen using a power glove in his boiler room while playing Spence. He uses a line "You forgot the power glove!!"
[edit] The Wizard
The Power Glove was prominently shown off in the Nintendo-produced film The Wizard, memorably wielded by antagonist Lucas Barton (Jackey Vinson), whose smug boast, "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!" became an internet meme years later.[8][9] Mutant Reviewers from Hell noted that
…the Power Glove was an odd controller for the NES that required you to wear a huge glove that really did very little, but the movie treats it with such awe, such holy reverence that all of the witnesses to its mighty power are left speechless. That is, until Lucas gives us one of the film's most memorable lines: 'I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!'[10]
[edit] The New Adventures of Captain S
It is the villain's henchman, NES's controller equivalent. It has the same functionality as Captain S's Sega Genesis controller, in that it allows him to use certain powers of the X-Code.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.laparoscopic.md/surgery/robotics/history.html
- ^ http://www.lumbroso.fr/lionel/03_Plume/RV/RV_Ch07.htm
- ^ age tech
- ^ {PowerGlove FAQ}
- ^ 1993 VR Conference Proceedings
- ^ Video comparision of the Wii Remote to the Power Glove
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2IUNBzUAO8
- ^ The Wizard review, Xentertainment
- ^ The Wizard review, I-Mockery
- ^ The Wizard review, Mutant Reviewers From Hell
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