Nintendo's 1989 Power Glove peripheral for the original Nintendo Entertainment System was a critical and commercial flop, and after watching this Teens React video it isn't hard to see why.
The video comes from YouTube channel TheFineBros, where a group of teens get their first look at the Power Glove. At first they seem pretty excited by it. Designed as a new way to play Nintendo games through the use of motion control, the concept was way ahead of its time, a fact that isn't lost on many of the teens.
"It was like the Wii before the Wii," says one teen, as others react to the undeniably cool "cyborg" aesthetic the glove presents. One teen calls the glove "Next-Gen" while contemplating the potential of linking a Power Glove with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Another teen asks "We aren't using these today why?"
As the teens soon find out, the reason the Power Glove is not still around today is because it doesn't really work. The teens take the device for a spin in several different video games and soon discover the technology isn't all there. Not only are players required to learn a different set of complex motion controls for each title, but rarely does the game actually recognize the teen's inputs. It's not as simple as the Power Glove's marketing campaign made it out to be.
When asked at the end if the Power Glove is a "good way to game," the teens definitively answer "absolutely not." But just because the Power Glove is a crappy way to game doesn't mean it is completely useless. The failed peripheral has seen a resurgence of sorts, as musicians have reprogrammed the glove to work as a mixing tool. An animator for Robot Chicken even re-purposed his Power Glove to work as a wireless controller for his stop-motion animation work. With today's technology, could the Power Glove work? Definitely. Too bad it's more than 20 years too late.
