Nintendo helped invent VR with this terrible glove | Version History

Quick Overview

The Nintendo Power Glove, an accessory that promised revolutionary VR-like interaction for the NES, ultimately failed commercially because it was overly complicated, required extensive calibration for every game, and lacked natively developed software to showcase its potential, despite originating from advanced VPL Research technology.

Key Points: The Power Glove was marketed with the tagline "Everything else is child's play," but users frequently discovered that "it never works" and required consulting large instruction booklets, with some customers paying $1.50 per minute to call a 900 number for support instead of reading the documentation. The underlying technology stemmed from Thomas Zimmerman's 1982 flex sensor patent and VPL Research's high-end Data Glove, which cost $10,000 and was used by NASA for remote work, showcasing ambitious technology that was severely compromised for the consumer version. Mattel reduced the Data Glove's cost from thousands of dollars to $23 for production by using semiconductive ink and ultrasonic tracking, but the resulting consumer product was significantly worse than VPL's professional iteration. Nintendo demanded durability proof, requiring the glove to withstand "10 million finger bends," and insisted it work with every NES game, necessitating that Mattel reverse-engineer controls for all existing titles, a task one person spent a year documenting. The Power Glove's primary marketing focused on violent, large motions, exemplified by its integration into the movie The Wizard where Lucas Barton declares, "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad," despite the motion control being better suited for slower movements, leading to exhaustion during play. The device was only available in right-handed versions in two sizes (medium and large), ignoring left-handed users, a pragmatic decision driven by capitalism, despite Nintendo's own famous designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, being left-handed. The first game truly made for the glove, Super Glove Ball, did not release until a year after the Power Glove launched, leaving early adopters with no native software to properly demonstrate its capabilities.