Maker(s): PAX
Date: 1989
On display: Yes
Object number: LI1
Credit line: On loan from a private collector
The Pax Power Glove, released in 1989, was an important stepping stone in the development of virtual reality, video games, and motion control. Based on its wired glove predecessors – the Sayre Glove (1977) and VPL’s Data Glove (1987) – the Power Glove promised to put the control directly into the player’s hand.
At $10,000, with an accompanying Data Suit and Eye Phone costing $250,000, the Data Glove’s price tag had relegated its technology to purely corporate use. With the Power Glove, Nintendo intended to bring the same technology to players at home. Albeit, for a much reduced price of $75. A million-dollar advertising campaign began, complete with tie-in movie, The Wizard (1987).
The Power Glove works through a combination of transmissions, triangulation, ultrasonic sensors, and a microprocessor. All of which are located in the glove’s arm guard. A signal is transmitted from the glove and is picked up by a series of receivers placed around a television. Based on when the microphones in the receivers pick up the signal a formula is produced which triangulates the location of the glove in 3D space. The Power Glove came complete with multiple modes and settings, include slow-motion and Turbo Mode.
Despite being created exclusively for Nintendo and the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), the Power Glove was designed in the United States. In an unusual move, engineers from Mattel, AGE and Image, Design & Marketing, were given only five months to produce design concepts, software and hardware. All these processes were completed in tandem, and engineers called it a “real fire drill” of production.
The first prototype for the glove took the team just six days to design. It was released in 1989 in Japan as the Pax Power Glove, and in Europe and the US as the Mattel Power Glove.
While it became one of the most well-known video game peripherals in history, featuring in multiple films and television series, the Power Glove ultimately failed to make good on its promise. But what made the idea of the Power Glove so captivating to audiences?
At the time of the glove’s release, console videogames were only beginning to move into the third dimension as far as graphics were concerned. 3D based games – beginning with arcade game Battlezone (1980), and later Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 (1996) – would completely change the videogame landscape. It re-imagined how games could be experienced by players. Additionally, film and media of the early 1990’s were fascinated by the idea of ‘3D Internet’, and the inter-connected spaces it might offer.
Videogames became the subject of multiple Hollywood films and television shows. Movies about gamers and the internet appeared directly after the release of the Power Glove. These included The Lawnmower Man (1992), Sneakers (1992), Super Mario Bros (1993), The Net (1995), Virtuosity (1995), Hackers (1995), and even a Freddy Krueger film! In Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), Krueger wears a modulated Power Glove.
Appearing on screen as stimulating and versatile, the reality of the glove unfortunately never quite lived up to the hype. Players were underwhelmed by the gloves’ control and response time. The lack of exclusive games also added to the disappointment. Selling well under forecasted sales expectations, the Power Glove was abandoned a year after its release, in 1990.
In the end, the Power Glove became a symbol of a potential haptic future. One that would end up taking Nintendo nearly 20 years to reach with the release of the Wii in 2006. Its legacy never lay in giving players of the 1990’s an efficient tool to use but rather in leading them aspirationally forward, pointing to the immersive digital worlds ahead.
Designers for the Power Glove also worked on designs for Robocop 2 (1990). VPL’s Data Glove, Data Suit and Eye Phone feature prominently in sci-fi thriller The Lawnmower Man (1992) .
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