The forearm of the glove featured a directional pad, action buttons and a bevy of programmable buttons that you could use for things like special finishing moves. Happily, Power Glove came in two sizes. Rather unfairly, it was made only in right-handed versions. The system worked thanks to two primary components, the glove and three microphones on an L-bracket that you mounted to your television.
From two small speakers, the glove emitted ultrasonic beeps inaudible to human ears. The microphones mounted near the TV picked up the sounds, and the system's CPU calculated the relative distance of the glove depending on how much time it took for the sound to reach the microphones.
With that data, the CPU triangulated the glove's location and translated it to onscreen action. From a distance of 5 feet 1. It worked quickly, updating the glove's position about 30 times per second. The glove also tracked finger movements. Fiber optic tubes were laced into the first four fingers of the glove the pinky finger was considered redundant and thus left sensorless and lonely. As you flexed your fingers, light through the fiber optic tube became more constricted.
A light sensor at the base of the glove detected the loss of light and determined where and how far the tube was bent. Because the sensors were a low-cost and rudimentary variety, the system could basically pick up only four finger positions: fully extended, fully curled, and two in-between positions. The Power Glove's top-notch marketing transfixed a generation of young gamers.
Everyone wanted to strap on the glove that surged with blue electrical pulses and vanquished foes at every turn in TV commercials. It was a chance to be a superhero of sorts. Yet within minutes of unpacking the glove, most kids felt an unsettling disappointment. The Power Glove simply didn't work. It was supposed to be fun, but instead it made gaming an exercise in futility.
Low-quality parts were part of the problem. To maintain a realistic price, Mattel stripped the Power Glove down and used the cheapest hardware components they could find. This had the desired effect of minimizing the price per unit, but it raised the frustration level to maximum. The consumer-level quality of the microphones was problematic. Issues with distortion lowered the accuracy of position detection and subsequently made it much harder to control your character.
The product couldn't track minute move movements at all. It could only follow big, sweeping gestures, and even then, not very well. Lack of precision meant you wound up hitting the reset button over and over again, recalibrating the glove in a futile attempt to make it work more like a piece of sophisticated technology and less like a failed prototype. Then, there were the games. To get full 3-D motion, the Power Glove needed games programmed specifically to its capabilities.
Problem was, only two titles were ever released for these features; with all other games, the Power Glove was basically shoehorned into playability, and the results were inaccurate character control and a lot of rolled eyes.
It was endlessly repetitive, and the glove's lack of responsiveness made it a chore to execute even the three basic punches and kicks. Even the Power Glove's included literature reflected the panic with which the manufacturer threw this product together. Let's start with some silliness straight out of the product manual. The microphones were mounted to a so-called L-bar that rested on top of the TV.
This obviously L-shaped bar had to be somewhat level with respect to the TV. To ensure that it was high enough, the Nintendo user manual helpfully suggests that you pile "books, boxes or other stackable things on top of your TV to lift up the L-Bar. Before you could use the glove with certain games, you had to configure it using program codes. The first program code was basic and featured fundamental gaming controls.
Move your hand left and right to move the character in the same direction; ditto for up and down. To trigger the A and B buttons, you flexed your thumb and index finger, respectively. There were other programs preset for specific gaming functions. Want to pilot a plane?
Preset No. But you had to remember which movement would translate into the proper onscreen jump, kick or punch with the program code you were using. Many of the glove's programs were actually so counterintuitive in this regard that Mattel provided an illustrated guide for each of the 14 program codes. Even for hardcore, everyday gamers, this unwieldy system was difficult if not impossible to remember in the heat of a fast-paced game. Because the back side of the glove had regular gamepad controls, such as directional arrows and action buttons, you could also use it just as you would a regular controller.
It was likely the only way to use the Power Glove with any consistency. But as a captivating piece of technology and marketing, the Power Glove left an indelible mark on gaming society and our larger culture, too. As evidence, even though the glove didn't work very well, it spawned products that actually do. The Nintendo Wii controller and the Microsoft Kinect are examples of successful gesture-based gaming, and without the Power Glove as inspiration, who knows if they would've ever come into existence.
Hollywood types have regularly weaved Power Glove references into their films. He twists the Nintendo sales pitch a bit and says, "Now I'm playing with power!
Power Glove has been used in all sorts of pop-culture-tinged art projects. Electronic musicians don the glove to create funky new tracks and to make a lasting impression on stage.
The ripples of its impact are still felt today, more than 30 years later, while the original vision its creators had has been fulfilled, albeit in a most unusual way, turning up everywhere from horror cinema to indie rock. Zimmerman was a recent graduate from MIT as the video game industry enjoyed its first wave of commercial popularity. The arrival and subsequent dominance by Nintendo was just a few years further.
Zimmerman aimed to combine two things: music and technology. Imagine playing air guitar and hearing riffs on a speaker, or drumming the air and hearing the snares and crash cymbals.
That was his vision. Using a gardening glove, LED lights, tubes, and an array of doodads from a hardware store, Zimmerman had a working prototype of… something. He believed the technology could go further. Zimmerman left his invention dormant for years. At a music festival at Stanford University, he met Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and philosopher considered the founder of virtual reality. Lanier was recently spotlighted in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.
They envisioned big things. Video games were a distant thought — the industry was all but dead circa — as Zimmerman and Lanier anticipated working with titans like Apple and NASA. That said, most of their revenue was from their successful tie-in toys to the Rambo films. Best known for the Barbie franchise, Mattel had briefly dabbled in video games with the failed Intellivision console.
In the latter half of the s, Japanese company Nintendo resurrected the video game industry with its red-hot Nintendo Entertainment System NES console. Instead of trying to compete with Nintendo, executives at Mattel started to think of growing alongside the new giant. High off her experience, Barad approved the product for Mattel.
And they wanted it fast, in time for Christmas Instead, it fell on the shoulders of two employees to go through the entire NES catalogue to make the glove compatible. There were no games packaged with it, making the accessory a luxury item rather than an essential. Without that urgency, the fate of the Power Glove was sealed.
VPL filed for bankruptcy in , and the Power Glove faded into memory.
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