Saturday, September 10, 2011

A Layman and a 6 Month Old Puppy Try to Make a Power Glove Work Without Thoroughly Reading the Manual

Well, the clear shelf space I created through my Famicom sale has lasted all of a week. They were having a 40 percent off sale over at Omocha Souko on all purchases over 2000 yen (about 25$) so I decided to splurge on a PAX Power Glove.

This was sort of me just bowing to the inevitable. I've had chances to buy the Power Glove before but had always resisted the temptation. They aren't generally remembered as one of the better Famicom controllers after all, and they are pretty bulky and take up a lot of space. But after some consideration I decided that no Famicom collection worthy of the name could ever possibly be complete without this weird thing and so I finally caved and bought one.

This is a pretty good one, complete in its box and in almost brand new condition:
When I got my NES at the age of 13 I remember looking in the Zellers catalog and seeing this thing. It was 89.95.

You know what that means, right? Yup, it means that I wanted it so bad that more than 20 years later I remember which department store's catalog it was in and how much they wanted for it.

Of course, in the catalog they only showed a picture of the glove itself, which looks pretty awesome:
Its like having the entire Darth Vader outfit reduced to a glove and put on your hand.

In actual fact though the Power Glove requires a ton of other stuff to make it work. There is this rack thing with sensors that you have to put on your TV:
I was fortunate that our TV coincidentally happens to be the right size for this thing. The manual suggest stacking books on top of your TV if it is too small.

I love the fact that the sensor array has little LED lights that blink on and off seemingly at random while it is on. It looks like some background prop from a Star Trek set or something:
As I tried to play around with it a bit my dog, Doogle, discovered it:
He loves it. It is made of material that is roughly of the same texture and feel as most of his dog chew toys. So from the moment I put it on all he wanted to do was bite my hand.

I hasten to add that he pretty much always wants to bite my hand so this isn't necessarily the Power Glove's fault.

It did complicate matters somewhat though as I'm sure this thing is difficult enough to use even without a 5.4 kilogram fluffball with teeth basically hanging off the thing with his mouth. With one it is damn near impossible. I tried figuring out how to play Galaxian with it. While the spaceship moved around on the screen a bit, I'm not sure if this was in response to my movements or just some random thing that it did.

In fairness though I didn't actually read the manual, which has several pages dedicated to programming this thing, which I assume is necessary in order to make it work properly. Doogle just wasn't having any of that though so I reluctantly put the thing away without having fully realized the awesome potential that the glove promises. Perhaps someday I'll sneak it off the shelf when he is out for a walk with just my wife or something:)

20 comments:

  1. Ah, yes, the Power Glove! I wanted one of these back in the day, too -- well, at least until the negative reviews started coming out. Anyway, it'll be interesting to hear if you're ever able to get it to work fully -- and keep your pup away from it while you're playing :P

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  2. In before the "The Power Glove is so bad" jokes. Anyway, be sure to let us know how this works out for you. I don't have one, but I've heard it... doesn't work...

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  3. I always thought that the Power Glove ("it's so bad") was officially licensed from Nintendo, because of it's prominence in The Wizard. But it's made by PAX (who?) in Japan and Mattel in America.

    You figure that after seeing that it, you know, doesn't work, Nintendo or Mattel or someone would not attempt to bring it to the US. But it was probably a situation where Mattel saw it in Japan and said "POWERGLOVE? KIDS WILL WANT THIS FOR SURE! WHAT'S THAT? DOESN'T WORK? SCREW IT, THIS WILL SELL LIKE HOT CAKES, NOW PASS ME MY COCAINE" (it was the 80s after all).

    But perhaps the "Nintendo Gold Seal of Approval" doesn't mean as much as we thought...

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  4. Sorry for the double post, but if anyone is interested in the games Sean sent me I made a tumblr post about it here: http://lifeinplaid.tumblr.com/post/10055340892/famicomgoodies

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  5. Bryan and Skyrunner- thanks. hopefully someday I`ll be able to figure it out. I`m not sure which games it goes well with. Er...if any such games exist.

    Nate - Yeah, I have no idea who PAX are. I`m not sure that they even exist anymore. You are probably right too, looking at the picture of the glove and its name the Mattel folks (while snorting rows of cocaine during a board meeting) probably just thought people would buy it like crazy before realizing how difficult it is to use.

    I read somewhere that the Wii`s technology traces its roots back to the Power Glove though, so it wasnt a completely wasted effort, it just took them 20 years to get teh bugs out!

    And thanks a lot for putting the pics of that lot up on tumblr! So nice to see my christmas lights box again:)

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  6. They have a sale at Omocha souko?! Man, gotta make a visit there again and fast!

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  8. Actually, according to the Power Glove Wikipedia article, the two games that the Power Glove was made for (Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Brawler) never were released in Japan.

    So, it seems it might have been the other way around? Mattel created it and Pax imported it to Japan. The article also says that because of this, Pax declared bankruptcy.

    EDIT: Check out the Japanese commercials for this thing!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMeog5rt5GU

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr9ja0Scko0

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  9. Samsa - YES! I`m not sure how long it will last but if you buy over 2000 yen worth of stuff you get 40% off. It only applies to some stuff in the store, but most of the retro game stuff is included. Get some deals while they last!

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  10. Nate - Sweet, thanks for the CMs! I just checked WIkipedia too, rather unfortunate that the only two games made for it were never released here (yet the glove itself was, very cheeky of them).

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  11. Chortle! Your dog would make me laugh even if he wasn't called Doogle! :P The Power Glove has always made me chuckle too. I remember the adverts for it and the complaints from the few gamers who actually bought it. It's amazing that this appeared on a Nintendo console, they of the (usually successful) controller innovations. Did you ever have a ROB the Robot? I hear he was just as bad... :P

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  12. Yes, Doogle does a good job of eliciting laughs. It is his only saving grace:)

    I dont have the ROB and have never tried one out. I have heard much the same about it though. For some reason it is much more expensive than the Power Glove so I havent bought one yet. They seem to be a bit harder to find, which I guess is why.

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  13. Damn, I'm too late to make references to The Wizard :)

    Never had a NES back in the day, but one of my mates did, and he also had a Powerglove. It... kinda didn't work. It certainly didn't give the tacit feel that the little snippet in The Wizard suggested for Rad Racer.

    But still... now I have a Famicom, I kinda want one :)

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  14. LOL, yeah I have to watch the Wizard again now that I have the Power Glove. It looked so awesome in that movie, even though the kid wearing it was the stereotypical 80s bad guy kid.

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  15. lol, I have the DVD around here as well. Might try and convince my wife that it would be fun to watch it again :)

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  16. Hey Sean. Just wanted to let you know that I love your blog and that it's in my regular rotation of bookmarks that I check almost daily. In fact, your blogging has inspired me to start my own blog, although in my native Icelandic language :)
    Keep up the good work!

    Kiddo @ Famicomworld

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  17. Hi Kiddo,

    Thanks! And good luck with your blog, it can be a fun thing to do! If you have a link I can put it on my list.

    Sean

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  18. The link is http://kiddo.blog.is . But don't feel obligated to link it, since 99.9% of people who'll click the link won't be able to understand anything that's written there :)

    Kiddo @ Famicomworld

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  19. That is OK, there are what, about 300,000 Icelandic speaking people out there? I have a few Icelandic friends here actually, though none of them are video game people.

    Anyway, I put a link up because your blog has that awesome Famicom game shelf on it:)

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  20. Haha, thanks a bunch man. Yep, you should be right about that figure. Once I figure out more about how my blogging system works I'll link you as well :)

    Kiddo @ Famicomworld

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