The challenge is finding new challenges,
one is this year’s new Christmas present: the Power Glove.
Well this is the latest thing in computer games:
no keyboards, no joysticks, just this glove.
I was about 11 years old,
and my mom & dad thought it was a dumb idea.
It was totally worthless, but it looked cool at the time.
It was the future, you know, when we were young.
There are those of us with Power Gloves, and there are...
the rest of us, who sadly are without.
Seeing my hand actually, you know, in the game...
oh, to a kid, that was awesome.
Yes, I have the power! (LAUGHS)
And now back to “Video Power.”
Welcome to “Video Power,” Novak.
Hey Johnny, when I said I’d be on “Video Power” anytime,
I expected a little advance notice.
I’m sorry Novak, I couldn’t wait to show my friends the Power Glove.
Ah, what can I say? Uh, since you’re here,
why don’t you give us a few demonstrations?
Sure, basically the Power Glove turns your arm into kind-of...
a 3-dimensional joystick made out of meat.
Well, my name is Novak.
I worked at Mattel Toys for about 4 and a half years...
and I worked on the Power Glove project...
for about a year and a half.
I designed the custom game software for use with the Glove.
The only one that was ever published was “Super Glove Ball.”
The Power Glove originally started at VPL in Redwood City, California.
And so they had a glove they’d made called the DataGlove.
The DataGlove was this $10,000 glove that NASA used for research.
There were a lot of inventors that would come in...
from all over the world to show stuff to our executives.
When we flew into L.A. to pitch the product to Mattel,
You know, to sell it.
I was still trying to get the Power Glove demo working.
They presented, I think they had the prototype of the Glove...
We had a meeting with Mattel.
and they were demoing it with a game, a commercial game...
called “Punch-Out.”
Well, the demo went pretty well.
Everything worked.
And the President, Jill Barad...
Then Jill Barad stands up, and she said, “I wanna try!”
And we thought, “Oh my God...
there’s no way she’s going to be able to do this.”
and, you know, she put the glove on.
And you have to throw punches like this,
and she said, “OK, no problem.”
She starts the game, and she starts making these wild motions.
I don’t know what she’s doing!
And the first thing she did: she punched and she knocked...
the video game opponent out.
It was a complete fluke.
And she was completely thrilled. She un-velcros the glove,
she throws it off her hand, and she says, “Everybody...
out in the hall! We’re doing this fucking product.”
(EXCITING HEAVY METAL MUSIC)
Actually making you part of every Nintendo game!
Ultrasonic tracking gives you precision control!
All your Nintendo games come to life with the Power Glove!
Hey, that looks just like...
the Power Glove! Everything else is child’s play.
Wow, I really have a lot of Power Gloves!
(COUNTING)
The Power Glove, to me, means the origins.
You know, I got heckled a lot. A lot of people were like,
“You’re a grown man, why are you still wearing the Power Glove?”
But they just didn’t understand the cultural significance of it.
Earth is kinda boring. (LAUGHS) It really is!
So if you’re not an astronaut,
or a soldier,
or you’re one of those guys who’s landing the probe on Mars...
realistically, society is really kinda boring.
In video games, your imagination is as far as technology...
allows you to express it, and the Power Glove connects me to that.
If I didn’t wear the Power Glove, I’d be like most gamers...
in the world, who just grew up.
They loved it when they was a child, they had all the imagination,
and when they grew up, they lost the imagination.
And I’m like, well I’m gonna wear the Glove no matter what,
because I have the courage to withstand the world...
whether they like it or not.
And then, you know, so I live like two lives...
two different personalities.
I don’t wanna say I’m like Batman, but I knew that was gonna come up.
So, I’ve been doing this for a very long time,
and I don’t see where I’m gonna stop.
This is a part of my, um, this is who I am.
I’m Tri-Force: Game-Master.
(ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC)
I’m interested in how people interact with technology.
I call human interface where the bits meet the flesh,
and that’s the threshold I work on.
I’m Tom Zimmerman & I’m the inventor of the original DataGlove,
and this is my friend Sam Wantman, who was there at the beginning.
We collaborated to create what became the DataGlove.
So the idea for a glove...
a DataGlove, came from discussions we were having about ways...
to control electronic music with gesture.
The electronic music that was happening in the 70s went through...
so much equipment that it was a total cerebral experience.
You had to think about what you wanted to do to make the sound,
and you had to plug in wires and you had to turn the knobs.
And we were like, we don’t wanna do that!
We wanna just feel it. We wanna make it interactive.
We wanna feel it. We don’t wanna know what all the details are.
I wanted to be able to go like this and actually hear...
Jimi-Hendrix-kind of guitar coming out of the speakers.
So I boiled it down to a problem, an engineering problem,
of: how do I measure the bending of fingers?
The DataGlove,
well the DataGlove started out when Tom had a simple glove...
This is the earliest existing prototype...
of the precursor to the Power Glove.
that was pretty much analagous to what the Power Glove was...
as far as the sensors are concerned, the bend sensors.
I was so enamored with the idea of conducting virtual orchestras...
and playing air guitar that I actually developed...
this flex-sensor that could measure finger bending...
and hooked them to my Atari 400.
Now I had a working system;
I could demonstrate of the ideas we had just been talking about...
for several years.
It turned out what happened was once we finally built those systems,
it was really hard to play air guitar...
without the physical feedback of the neck of the guitar. (LAUGHS)
But I was interested in it, and then I met Jaron,
and that changed a lot.
Hello! So, now you wanted me to talk about virtual reality a bit?
< Sure.
OK, so, alright I started this company; it’s called VPL.
Hi new cameras! (LAUGHS)
And um, what we’re working towards is building...
a new level of reality called Virtual Reality.
In 1982 I moved out to California and joined Atari.
I had the glove, and I actually showed it to Atari.
They offered me $10,000 for the patent.
And I talked to a friend of mine in New York and he said,
“No! It’s worth more than that!” So luckily I didn’t sell it to them.
And um, I met Jaron Lanier at an electronic music concert.
When Jaron Lanier & Tom Zimmerman got together, Tom had...
a simple version of a glove, and Jaron had an idea...
for a visual programming language.
And it was peanut butter meets chocolate.
The glove was a very rich input device and...
he had this visual programming language.
So I started making gloves for him.
And we then added the ultrasound tracking,
which gave tracking the hand in 3D space, which really then...
made it possible to do virtual environments.
VPL was a fun place, a fun place to work.
It was a little bit of a pressure cooker.
VPL was a small company and was chronically under-funded.
We had very short deadlines and kinda really big ideas...
and then we wanted to do something about them right away.
We were mostly a research organization.
So it was VPL Research, Inc.
We were always trying to do more than we possibly could do.
We were open to every possibility.
We tried to do a programming language,
medical applications,
virtual reality,
so mostly we were interested in researching the boundaries...
between human and computer interface.
Uh, along the way, we had to make money.
So, Jaron was developing a visual programming language...
and I remember there were kangaroos and ice-cubes,
and so we were using the glove to manipulate those.
I think what happened was people said,
“We’re really not interested in programming computers.
We just want to play video games.”
< Meet Chris Gentile.
< The soon-to-be-released music glove,
one of many products of Chris, his older twin brothers,
John & Anthony Gentile, and toy-executive Marty Abrams.
< They are the New York-based Abrams/Gentile Entertainment,
or A.G.E.
Abrams/Gentile Entertainment was started back in 1986.
My brothers were involved... they were artists...
and they were producing movie posters...
for all of the film studios.
And one of the movie posters they were doing...
was a movie poster for the movie “Rambo.”
And my brothers said, “Rambo? That could be a cool toy!”
(EXCITING MUSIC) # Rambo the Force of Freedom! #
< Here’s a present, Havoc!
Wow! >
< Rambo, behind you!
So they went to the studio to look for the licensing rights for it.
And basically the studio said,
“Do you really want to do this? This is an R-rated movie.”
Because no toys were ever made before from an R-rated movie.
So they basically gave the license to my brothers,
and as everybody knows, Rambo was one of the hottest toys...
that came out on the market.
So that’s what got them into the toy industry.
We had basically the hardware already...
and we just needed to turn that into a commercial product.
So we went to Mattel and to A.G.E.
So we met Jaron Lanier up at VPL.
He basically handed off the device to us...
and then we started playing with it.
This is a technology that we took in.
$10,000 glove, has a sensor, has optic fibers,
knows where your hand is in three-dimensional space.
We tried to apply it to the toy industry;...
our first product was a thing called the “band of the hand.”
(MUSIC: Ascending musical scale)
We have a drum.
DRUM SOUNDS
Snare.
DRUM SOUNDS
Here this prototype demonstrates the technology.
The glove knows where your fingers are...
and the prototype here shows you.
The inventor group was called A.G.E.
And I had been working with them... I think for a little over a year.
So we closed the deal with Jill Barad...
for the Nintendo Power Glove, and that’s when...
the real challenge started, because we had...
this $10,000 VPL DataGlove...
So one of the challenges was figuring out a way...
of making this thing cost-effective.
And there was a lot of tension.
This was a very high-profile product at Mattel.
You have to understand...
that the Power Glove is a different product for Mattel...
compared to the other products they were doing because they had...
a bad history that happened in the gaming industry...
with Intellivision.
I’m Keith Robinson,
I’m president today of Intellivision Productions, Inc.
Intellivision was originally introduced by Mattel...
in the early 1980s.
It was their first foray into the video game industry,
which was a brand new industry.
There really had been no such thing as video games before the early 70s.
And it was pretty much Pong games.
Everybody wanted to play Pong.
It wasn’t really until the mid-70s that Atari invented...
the “Video Computer System.”
It became renamed the “Atari 2600.”
And it was really for the first time a computer in a device...
that you could play.
And it really looked like this is where the future was going to go.
And Mattel being the biggest toy company in the world,
billion dollar toy industry, said, “We should have one of those!”
‘Intellivision: intelligent telivision by Mattel’
‘More sophisticated than any video game that has come before.’
So they came out with the Intellivision,
which was quite a commitment for them,
because here they’d been selling $5 Barbie Dolls and now suddenly...
here’s a $300 electronic unit.
‘What you are about to see will change your mind...
about television. Intellivision!’
‘So intelligent, no game plays the same way twice.’
‘Intellivision!’
‘The most exciting family entertainment system...
since television itself.’
But uh, so it was a commitment.
It took several years for them to kinda, you know,
get it through the board of directors and everything.
But when they finally did, it just took off phenomenally.
The toy company had been making a profit, nice & consistent,
of about $40 million a year, and here comes along this system...
that makes $100 million— 200 million dollars in 1982.
And so, “Wow this thing was going great!”
“This is just gonna be the future of toys!”
“This is the future of Mattel!”
And then at the end of 1982,
it just hit the wall.
Everything fell apart.
They introduced all this new hardware,
put all this money into development, but the games—
The games were still selling.
There was like a 10% increase...
in the desire for video games in 1983,
but there was like a 300% increase in availability...
because every company was getting into it.
You had third-party developers like Activision, Imagic, you had now...
not only Atari & Intellivision but ColecoVision got into the game.
And there was just too much product, and a lot of it was not very good.
And um, Mattel lost in 1983 about $380 million.
Well, when Mattel Intellivision went out of business,
it almost brought Mattel Toys down.
They sold off a lot of assets, lost a ton of money.
In order to save it, they actually had to sell off...
51% of the corporation.
And pretty much the attitude at that point was,
“Boy those video games, that’s it! Boy, that was was a mistake!”
“We really blew that!”
And then Nintendo came along a couple years later...
with a new paradigm.
You couldn’t make a glut on the market because...
you couldn’t sell games for the Nintendo...
without Nintendo manufacturing them for you.
The Nintendo system really kind of re-established video games...
as being this kind of positive,
“Hey we’re gonna make a lot of money now!”
But Mattel was really gun-shy.
They can’t go to their shareholders and say, “Hey,
we’re getting back into the video game business!”
Everybody’s gonna say, “Are you crazy?
You’re gonna bankrupt us again!”
So it was really pretty bold of them to pick up...
a video game related peripheral, but then it wasn’t the software...
that they were concerned about; it was the hardware,
which is what they do best.
I’m David Warhol and I led the team of four that developed...
the hardware prototype and the circuit board and...
the firmware for the Power Glove.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the Power Glove...
is based on ultrasound rather than infrared light.
It’s based on the speed of sound.
On the Glove itself, we have two transmitters:
Transmitters A & B.
And we have, over at the TV set, three receivers:
Receiver 1, Receiver 2, and then Receiver 3.
So, the way the Glove figures out where it is in space...
is that it chirps Transmitter A and then listens on Receiver 1...
for how long it takes for the sound to get there.
Then we do another chirp on Transmitter A...
and listen for it on Receiver 2,
and then we do another chirp on Transmitter A...
and then we receive it on 3.
Then, we repeat that whole sequence, but using Transmitter B.
So, given the amount of time it takes, we triangulate...
the distance of the Glove,
the rotation of the Glove,
the yaw.
Now, what we didn’t realize when we started the project...
but became apparent about halfway through...
is that based on the manufacturing tolerances of the transmitter,
and based on the speed of sound, this whole cycle...
could only be done 20 times a second,
which is 3 times slower than your typical Nintendo hand-controller.
So we knew from halfway through that the use of the Glove...
as a hand-controller would not be as responsive as using the actual...
controller itself.
What really became important was that games would be ready...
that used these interface tolerances as part of their design.
My name is Tracy Hall.
I was project designer for Mattel in the preliminary concept group...
for the Power Glove project when it was brought to Mattel,
and I was in charge of bringing in the technology...
so we could reliably manufacture this product for $89.99.
From the beginning, we started out literally with nothing but an idea.
So we had to deal with all the human ergonomic features...
A looks-like demonstration had to be ready for CES...
first week of January 1989.
We literally had about 8-10 weeks.
We worked day & night; we were working Thanksgiving...
through Christmas.
I remember we had teams of people sleeping at the office.
At that time, the bend sensor didn’t work,
the ultrasonic sensors didn’t work.
We made something that looks like this,
but it had $10,000 technology inside of something...
that looked like this.
So some of this was even inspired by the movie “Robocop”...
or the type of look that we were looking for.
Something that kids would feel empowered...
when they put this thing on, that they thought that this was...
the coolest thing in the world, and that this was...
maybe a $1,000 robotic type of glove that they were putting on.
My name is Noah Lane.
I am the senior project coordinator for iam8bit, which is...
an art gallery in Los Angeles.
I am also the artist behind “Beat It,”...
which is the Michael Jackson Power Glove.
I think the Power Glove is still around,
or just in the memories of so many gamers...
is just because it’s so iconic.
It’s something you can wear, so first of all,
you can take it out of your home and, “Oh, it’s a fashion accessory!”
It looks like it’s something from the future.
You know, people were really into virtual reality at the time.
I think of it as a cool design.
I wouldn’t call it, like, “Oh that’s a masterpiece!” but...
nobody really used it who was a real, serious gamer.
I mean, I know of TriForce, who’s always wearing his when he’s out.
I’ve seen him, TriForce, on Kotaku and just other blog sites...
when he’s going, “Oh I’m gonna line up for a Wii-U...
or any Nintendo product, like, weeks early” and then...
he gets to meet Regie and they get to get their photo taken.
I’ve seen that.
So right now, we’re lining up for the Zelda symphony event.
It’s the 25th anniversary orchestra.
and it is 10 o’clock Thursday night,
and the event happens 6pm Friday night.
As you can see, we’re already lining up,
so we’re gonna have to spend the night out here,
so I’m just gonna relax out here, and that’s pretty much it.
CROWD CHEERS
< This is for the people who were here yesterday? There’s a line?
Oh, OK. Isaiah TriForce Johnson.
TriForce? Yeah we know who you are. >
< Oh OK, so you already know.
Events like this...
pretty much binds the heritage of our old school...
with the new school...
and I think the Power Glove is a part of that experience.
The reason why people understand the Power Glove now...
is because there’s context behind it,
and I don’t wanna sound arrogant but the context is me.
APPLAUSE
< It’s so great to be here and it’s so great to recognize...
some of the fans in the audience. That means a lot to us.
We came up last night to see some of the people that were sitting...
outside and I just want to give a big shout-out to TriForce,
who’s out there somewhere.
< Alright!
APPLAUSE
So, it’s our pleasure, and let’s begin.
APPLAUSE
(DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)
APPLAUSE
There will never be a time when I put up the Power Glove because...
the Power Glove repurposed me as a person.
The Power Glove has been such a great inspiration to me that...
that inspiration has transformed me into TriForce permanently.
Long live the Power Glove!
< From a cultural standpoint, I thought there were...
< some interesting things out there.
< There was that community, that fanbase, that really embraced...
the Glove for what it meant to them.
And I was signing autographs.
People were sending me their manuals to sign.
But then, 15 years after the Power Glove came out,
there was the Nerdcore calendar, which...
it’s naked women with the Power Glove.
Wow! > < Yeah! So that’s how you knew...
that the fanbase was actually getting older...
because they went from wanting to play little video games...
to, you know, porn.
My name is Daniel. >
I’m the owner of Lost Ark Video Games and...
I had a Power Glove in the display case...
since the day we opened.
And it’s gotten reactions pretty much every single day...
I’ve been here.
There’s always someone seeing it and getting excited to see it...
for the first time or show it to their friend.
So...
a Power Glove party. Why not?
Give people that chance to feel the Power for themselves!
Woah! Hello! Now it’s going into crazy mode!
Well, I already feel more powerful.
Alright, so I appear to be throwing a pool cue at a wall of bricks.
Now you can, like, grab the ball and, like, throw it down...
where you want it.
Oh no!
Yo, gimme that ball!
I don’t think I’m playing it very well.
Wow, that does give you gas.
Ah!
< Did you get him? No! >
And now I have three balls going. I don’t know what I did.
Wait, what’s it doing? It’s, like, freaking out.
Ha! OK, they all died.
This is awkward and unenjoyable.
I can’t catch the bastard!
And this thing: it barely works.
This is pretty impressive, actually.
Almost!
And my fish— the fish keeps grabbing my ball...
which is a common problem in life.
Wait, wait! Ah!
They’re trying really hard to be super cool in 1989.
Do you mind if I keep...
if I can go a couple more rounds?
I’ll admit it: I never played it.
I didn’t really want to.
Now I have.
I don’t regret it.
Did it change my life?
Maybe.
Did it awaken a nascent fire inside my sleepy soul?
Possibly.
Nothing...
nothing really captures that retro experience...
like the Power Glove.
OK, could you show us a few moves? >
< Yeah, OK, sure.
Here’s a basic move. It’s how to get a lot of power-ups...
in the beginning of “Super Glove Ball.”
The trick is: you just don’t hit the ball, you grab it.
And then you ram it up against a question mark and let go.
Keep doing that until you get the “Super Ball.”
ELECTRONIC BEEP
Hear that sound? It means you did it right.
< “Super Glove Ball” was— it’s a game of, um...
< essentially virtual handball.
There he is: the wizard!
< You’re viewing a pseudo 3-D space with a ball bouncing around...
< inside of it.
< And you’re trying to hit the ball with your hand...
and throw it and spin it.
When I first saw the Power Glove, you know,
we had a top-level Mattel executive saying, “We’re doing this.
No matter what, we’re doing this.”
Being the video game guy, I thought it was kinda silly.
You want it? You got it! This is it! The Power Glove!
This will change the way you play Nintendo games forever.
< You’re looking at the future, kid.
Awesome! >
< To me, the only cool thing about the Power Glove...
was having custom-designed software that could take advantage of it.
Using it as an NES controller...
sucked.
< They didn’t want to wait to make the game software.
< Mattel was so anxious to get the Power Glove to market...
that they released it a year ahead of any softwares ready for it.
And so one poor guy, I remember his name was Darin,
spent six months going through every Nintendo game...
trying to see how the Glove would work...
with existing off-the-shelf Nintendo games.
My name is Darin Barri and I’m the poor guy...
who had to play all the existing Nintendo games and write templates...
for them so that they would work with the Power Glove.
< The games that were developed for the Power Glove...
were not gonna come out for another year,
so it was important to have all the games work...
with the Power Glove— pre-existing games.
And that’s what I did.
I had to actually play each game, learn it, & then write a code.
This is really cool, and I was really glad when I found this.
So, I shot video of our test-mode, which basically was a cartridge...
that you would plug into the NES.
And this represents everything that the Glove was doing.
So for instance, this was X and Y, this was Z,
these are the three sensors that were on top of the television,
the ultrasonic sensors, and these represented the bend sensors.
So when I moved the Glove around...
you can see I was moving left & right, up & down,
and this was Z, this was in & out.
And then this was rotation, and these represent all the bend sensors.
So this was actually a really good working sample, really clean.
It was really beautiful. And then also I could test...
the buttons on the control pad if I wanted to as well.
The technology for the time was quite amazing.
It knew where it was in 3-D space, it knew if you rotated your hand,
but when we were working on it, we had absolutely no idea...
that people were going to covet these things and hack them...
and create, you know, musical instruments.
(ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC)
Uh, my name is Yeuda Ben-Atar. I go by “Sidebrain.”
I’m a producer, a sound designer, a musician...
and the music that I make is down-tempo electronic music...
heavily influenced by hip-hop, and I perform my music...
using the Power Glove.
I think the Power Glove is such a failing product,
and at the same time, it’s such an amazing looking object.
It’s just something that you... you are awed by it because...
it’s such goofy looking, nerdy looking,
and at the same time, so awesome & cool!
And by the way, that’s exactly how music is: tension & release.
And the Power Glove, because it’s a glove,
and the way I’ve programmed it,
it allows me to actually grab the music,
and it sounds like the music is in a certain space,
and then release it.
And it’s such an interactive experience.
Only the Glove will allow me to do that.
It’s super portable! You know, I’m just taking the Glove!
I can put the Glove on, take my computer, & I’m ready to go!
And, I mean, it’s a glove. It’s a glove that makes music.
I think everyone can get inspired from that.
The other main part of my job was to present the Power Glove.
And, you know, as good looking as I am,
the powers-to-be at Mattel really thought that it would be best...
to have professional models & actors & actresses present the Glove.
So I was asked to help those people out...
because nobody really knew how to use it except for myself.
So I spent a lot of time & I developed these relationships...
with all these people who are still some of my best friends today.
We were... We were kinda rock stars at this point.
I say that... We were living the high life.
We were put up in nice hotels. We were given transportation, limos.
And we kinda had the run of the town as long as we showed up...
and did our job and presented well.
There was really nobody else there to guide us or direct us...
or watch over us, so we kinda just did what we wanted.
I can honestly say it was some of the best times I’ve ever had.
(EXCITING HEAVY METAL MUSIC)
I’m with the internationally known Novak, that’s “Novak,”...
game designer, inventor of the “Glove Ball.”
What do you have to say?
It’s a wrap!
You know, the relationship between Mattel & Nintendo...
was really thorny from the beginning.
First off, Nintendo management really disliked the Power Glove.
They thought it was a gimmick. They thought it was exploitive.
The Power Glove had a major, major issue...
about two weeks before we were launching the product.
We had shipped 83,000 units from China into the U.S. and...
they were sitting in our warehouse ready to be shipped out.
And then one night we got a phone call from Nintendo,
and Nintendo was not going to allow...
Mattel to ship the product with their Seal of Approval on it.
Every product— every Nintendo product had this Seal of Approval.
At the end of the day, you’re not going to ship...
a Nintendo product without their Seal of Approval.
So: on a plane was myself, Jill Barad... five of us...
flew up there and went into a conference room...
where they just ripped us!
One of the things was: inside each Glove— right now...
there’s a bit of material here; it’s brushed tricot.
It’s nice & soft.
Well, the Gloves that were shipped early didn’t have anything in there.
You know, their hands were chafing.
And they weren’t really able to figure out...
from the instruction book exactly how to actually get it to work.
There was some calibration that had to be done.
There was a “Center” button, and it wasn’t clearly spelled out...
in the book.
So when I got there, I had to give a demonstration and basically...
come up with a rebuttal to all their complaints.
So when they said, well, they couldn’t knock out anybody...
on “Tyson,” I sat there, put the Glove on,
knocked the guy out in seconds.
When they said that they didn’t understand the centering thing,
I said well— I showed them how to exactly do it...
and there was a little light that came on and...
Basically, the meeting got to a point where they said,
“You cannot ship the product the way it is.”
And they left the room.
So again, you know, I was just a, you know, a dumb kid...
and I really had no business being there other than the fact...
that I was going to demonstrate the Glove. So I just kinda spoke up.
I said, “Look guys, you can put a white cotton glove on.
“That would really help with the chafing issue.”
And then I said, “We can always put a poster or something in there...
that’s really cool that had basically the keys...
to calibrate and get it ready.
“We can print up a new manual really quickly...
with different types of pictures with arrows.”
What was important was to have the Glove and showing the motion.
I threw all this out there at them and they were like, “Fine.”
“Go sell them on it.”
So I literally walked into this room by myself where there was...
you know, the three top guys at Nintendo.
And I knocked on the door. I said, “Hey guys, look, here’s the deal.
“We’re gonna create a ‘comfort kit.’ And it’s gonna be a bag.
It’s gonna have a glove. We were planning on re-shooting...
that instruction manual anyway. We’re just gonna expedite that.
And we’re gonna put a poster in there to go over a lot of the basics.”
And they go, “Can you do that in two weeks?”
I said, “Yeah, of course.”
I walk back into the room with our guys.
I said, “Yeah no problem.” I said, “We gotta do it in two weeks.”
And from that point on, it was complete mayhem.
Literally the next day, we set up a photoshoot,
and we shot the new manual.
One of the other issues that Nintendo had was that their arm got tired...
by holding it up. I said, “Well yeah, of course,
because you’re not using the recommended position, which is...
to actually put your elbow on the arm of a chair.”
And so we then shot this picture of me sitting in a chair.
We shot this manual & had it printed, 83,000 copies in less than a week.
We had the poster printed, & we then went into the warehouse,
built these three assembly lines out of wood...
and hired all these workers to come in, carefully open...
the package, put all the new materials in. You know,
stuff the “comfort kits” into the poly bags...
and put everything into it, and we shipped everything...
two weeks later.
It was phenomenal. It was awesome.
< Here’s a company coming along trying to do this novel, crazy thing.
They just thought it was a big gimmick, and you know,
Nintendo is all about gameplay. “Gameplay! Gameplay! Gameplay!”
Well that drove Mattel marketing crazy because Mattel is,
if nothing else, a marketing machine.
They, you know, they’d do a media blitz.
They actually spent more on the TV commercial...
than they did on the actual game.
‘The Power Glove for your NES! Now you and the games are one!’
< Oh, it was marketed really well.
It showed what it could do, but in the first year...
of the Power Glove’s existence, it couldn’t do that.
Because what they were showing it could do in the TV commercial...
is playing this game, and this game wasn’t made yet.
Um, so that’s where they really dropped the ball.
They thought just on sheer marketing power...
they could sell the Glove in, even though it didn’t work so hot...
with other people’s games.
Oh! Here’s the script...
here’s the original script for “The Wizard” movie.
I was— the credit just says “Power Glove Consultant.”
So I helped the blonde haired kid who was playing “Rad Racer.”
Oh, here’s a picture— here’s a photo on set of “The Wizard.”
That’s Howard Beech from Mattel, that’s me,
and here are the two kid actors. I guess that’s, what, Fred Savage?
I think the original photo I gave to my mom.
Hey, I’m Todd Holland, and I’m the director of “The Wizard.”
So, “The Wizard,” in case anybody doesn’t know,
is a video game road movie with kids, and it was kid action,
a “kid action movie.”
It’s these kids who— a brother played by Fred Savage...
who takes off on the road to help his younger brother,
Jimmy, who is troubled & semi Austistic-seeming, you know,
basically fulfill this journey he wants to take...
to go to California for some reason.
And they end up meeting Jenny Lewis, the Haley character,
and they commit to go to this video game competition...
because they’ve discovered that Jimmy is a savant at video games.
Along the way, they meet a character named Lucas Barton.
Lucas has a locked case and opens it to reavel the Power Glove.
I think that the sentiment behind making the Power Glove worn...
and used by the villain: it empowered him.
It made him more equipped and more skilled...
..& more intimidating for our heroic underdogs in the narrative.
And it just... it made Lucas bad.
I love the Power Glove.
It’s so bad.
“The Wizard” was the kind of movie...
I sorta think of as a Hollywood sausage.
You know, it’s sort of this concocted commerce decision to put...
this incredibly popular young actor in a movie about video games,
which were soaring in popularity, and then put all this together...
in this confection.
The president of Universal Pictures at the time basically told me...
they wanted like a TV-movie director.
They wanted somebody to just come in & do the job & leave.
They didn’t want a lot of fuss.
They didn’t want a lot of creative fuss.
And it meant more to me than that, you know.
I really emotionally got hooked into the journey of these kids.
And that idea that you could create this sausage & pump it out...
..& people would consume it ravenously, that’s what prompted...
the greatest disappointment in “The Wizard”’s box office,
because audiences are just kinda too clever for that.
So, you know, how the Power Glove ended up in the movie...
is not as mysterious as it might sound.
It was a different era in product placement for movies.
If you wanted to put Coke in your movie, you called Coke up...
and they sent you a bunch of cases.
There weren’t whole divisions of studios trying to monetize...
that placement in a movie.
Mattel had come on and offered the Power Glove.
We had “Super Mario Brothers 3.”
‘Super... Mario Brothers... THREEE!!!!’
And they sent a rep out prior to show us what the Power Glove was,
because we had to film it, so we had to know.
And the guy came with his locked briefcase and they opened it,
and there it was laying in this foam, you know,
this cut foam enclosure, which is where I, of course,
stole the idea to do that exact same thing in the movie.
We thought it felt so incredibly cool.
We put the Power Glove in “The Wizard,”
and “The Wizard” basically failed at the box office.
I assumed the Power Glove went on to great fame & fortune.
I didn’t know until much later...
much like the fate of “The Wizard,”...
I didn’t know till much later that the Power Glove...
had actually fizzled very rapidly after the film.
And so “The Wizard” & the Power Glove, their fates...
are kinda tied together.
Both came out with great hype and anticipation.
Both failed to find the commercial foothold in the marketplace...
that they’d hoped to...
and both have risen now, decades later, to have...
a romantic cult following.
And I find that kind of...
charming & hilarious.
< Uh, I’m Chris Bishop >
< I’m one of the writers for the television show “The Goldbergs” >
I wrote the episode that features the Power Glove.
No way!
< Yes way! It was the Nintendo Power Glove. >
< It was magical. And it was mine. >
Obviously when I was a kid, I loved Nintendo and then...
the movie “The Wizard” came out and I got very excited.
“I love the Power Glove. It’s so bad.”
Um, that moment.
It’s not working! The damn thing’s not working! >
< You’re swinging it! Stop swinging!
I’m batting? I thought I was pitching! >
‘Everybody remembers the Power Glove because it was so different...
and it was so out there.’
You don’t get that excitement anymore for a toy.
You know, things are always constantly coming out,
so this one was like this big thing that was coming out...
around Christmas time and you were psyched for it.
It was the greatest thing ever.
And that’s why I thought the Power Glove...
was a perfect thing to put on “The Goldbergs”...
because it resonates and it has this power.
And it’s, you know, the eighties. It really reminds you of that time.
For years it was always the butt of jokes.
Like, “this piece of crap!”
“Remember this when you were six years old?”
But, you know, the hardware worked really well.
The three-dimensional poisitoning worked really well...
if you calibrated it correctly. So people started hacking.
Well, I guess people started getting home computers...
and started hacking the hardware.
My name is Linda Jacobson and I am a virtual reality evangelist.
I’ve been writing & speaking about virtual reality...
and producing virtual experiences for about 25 years.
And I wrote the book “Garage Virtual Reality” in 1994.
I grew up in the sixties & seventies and I was really affected...
by the political Zeitgeist of the time,
the “We shall overcome!” and “Power to the people!”
But back in the late eighties and early nineties,
this really cool technology that we were hearing about,
virtual reality, was not a technology for the people.
They were all in prestigious research labs...
and working for government agencies or universities.
And the technology was not accessible to hobbyists.
Here this Power Glove didn’t do well with the little kids,
but it didn’t take a great leap of imagination...
for very smart, geeky young adults to figure out...
that they could hijack this really cool toy controller...
to control their computers.
Young people at home saw this affordable controller...
as a really great way to gain access...
to this techno-elite world of virtual reality.
So it went from “Power to the People!” to...
“Power Glove to the People!”
For as long as I can remember,
I have been completely obsessed with the eighties.
I’ve tried to base as much of my life around it.
I listen to eighties music.
I wear clothes from the eighties.
And obviously the Power Glove...
is the iconic eighties video game controller.
I think this is the coolest looking glove...
ever! Of all time!
The only problem is that I couldn’t use it to do anything today.
When I started tinkering with the Power Glove,
I didn’t have one specific thing I wanted to do.
And it’s true I put in a lot of new hardware and new things,
but really all I did was make the original functionality...
work with today’s computers & software.
A lot of people have told me what the Power Glove was supposed to do...
and how it really never delivered on these promises,
and I think that it still can!
I think if anybody had the chance to take apart the Power Glove...
and to see how it works, put it together— if they had a vision...
of what they wanted to do, then they would also probably have...
a lot more interest in electronics or coding by the end of it.
We are here at Silicon Valley Virtual Reality expo!
This is like 20 years ago but better.
The hardware is amazing!
This is our digital glove, we call it Perception Neuron glove.
We’re using small sensors like this, and every single one sensor...
is capturing my finger orientation & position.
And by using multiple sensors like this,
we can capture the real-time hand motion.
The Power Glove is like the first generation...
of all those kinds of digital gloves.
It’s 26 years later, and you can see the impact...
that the Power Glove made on the generation of gamers,
because here they are! They’re entrepeneurs.
They’re investors. They’re developers.
And they’re creating this whole industry that’s really...
going to democratize virtual reality.
One of the things that I truly believe is that the Power Glove...
was the first consumer device to break the barrier...
between the virtual world and the real world.
People were very interested in the Power Glove.
That’s why the initial sales were really high.
‘A.G.E.’s Power Glove for the Nintendo System...
hit the marketplace and raked in over 85 million dollars in sales...
with its first introduction.’
We were already working on the next-level platform.
‘The new Power Glove with i-touch technology...
replaces the mouse & joystick for web & internet navigation,
and enables users to interact with i-touch websites as never before.’
‘With total Serial and USB compatibility, the Power Glove...
will take hold of both the explosive PC gaming market...
and the upcoming next-generation gaming platforms.’
‘The Power Glove with i-touch.’
‘The better link between man & machine.’
But then the sales started to drop off.
And their board members & their stock holders, I’m sure, were concerned...
that they were getting back...
into the place they went before with Intellivision.
And they decided to walk away from it.
I think the product itself – and a lot of products end up...
being this way – is the product was a compromise,
because we couldn’t make our own software.
So we had to try to make this play games where you do this.
And that by itself is a bit of a losing proposition.
20 years later, the Wii comes out.
They changed all those games from twitch games to games...
where you have big demonstrable motions.
They developed software.
They developed, seriously, not only software, but an entire platform...
< based on this. They designed the games for it. >
It’s not an easy compromise.
And in the toy industry, you’re always dealing with:
Do you want to be first? Do you want to be second & best?
If you get out there first and you don’t catch their interest,
will you get a second chance?
Unfortunately in the toy industry, you notoriously...
do not get a second chance.
If they had released the softwares with the Glove,
it could have had a whole different ending.
The Power Glove as a piece of history...
is just a momentary thing that somehow caught people’s attention.
It caught people’s fancy.
It’s stayed in the vocabulary for a long time.
A lot of American history is like that.
The Pony Express only operated for 18 months.
Yet for being in existence for such a short time,
there’s more film about the Pony Express...
than the time the Pony Express actually ran.
The Power Glove has kinda gotten that same kind of thing.
It’s like a lot of the American story.
Tiny little incidents take on broader meanings.
So the Power Glove has kind of become the icon,
even though in reality, I don’t think anybody used it...
as a toy for more than six months.
It’s been re-used a lot, but it was only a part of the popular culture...
for such a very short time.
American history and American stories is made up...
of all the small stories and the little things that occurred,
not the big incidents.
We’re much more fascinated with the little stories that go on.
So, hey! I’m a part of the little story!
In some ways, I have a connection to the Pony Express,
which is pretty good because I’ve never ridden a horse.