The horrible Nintendo controller that helped make VR occur

The Nintendo Power Glove was not good. It’s essential that that. The Power Glove was formidable, spectacular, even essential — one of many very first mainstream gadgets that allow you to management a recreation utilizing your physique as an alternative of simply your thumbs — however it was not good. In some methods, its not-good-ness is a key a part of the story.

The Power Glove confirmed up within the late Nineteen Eighties, at an advanced time for the gaming trade, when Nintendo was a massively highly effective power for the way forward for enjoyable. But the Power Glove wasn’t actually even a Nintendo product. It began as a analysis lark, turned a toy, and solely wound up with Nintendo’s title on it after a very fateful pitch assembly. Thanks to a exceptional advertising and marketing marketing campaign, and the sensation that VR typically provides of merely being the long run, the Power Glove wound up an inexpensive (if temporary) enterprise success. And you’ll be able to draw a line from the Glove to another massively profitable Nintendo merchandise — and possibly even to the entire VR trade as we all know it.

On this episode of Version History, our chat present about outdated know-how, we dig into the story of the Power Glove. It is, in some way, each very temporary and really lengthy. David Pierce, Fandom’s Chris Grant, and Game File’s Stephen Totilo discover the initiatives that led to the Power Glove, the various (many) causes it wasn’t an excellent product, and the methods during which it modified the long run anyway. They additionally try to arrange a decades-old Glove and play video games with it, which fits… poorly.

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And if you wish to know extra concerning the Power Glove, whether or not you bought to attempt it or not, listed below are some hyperlinks to get you began: