Power Glove

The Power Glove is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The Power Glove itself was a commercial success for its early virtual reality mechanics and being shown in various forms of media. However, its two games did not sell well, as it was not packaged with a game, and it was criticized for its imprecise and difficult-to-use controls.

Development

The Power Glove was originally released in 1989. Though it was an officially licensed product, Nintendo was not involved in the design or release of this accessory. Rather, it was designed by Grant Goddard and Samuel Cooper Davis for Abrams/Gentile Entertainment (AGE), made by Mattel in the United States and PAX in Japan. Additional development was accomplished through the efforts of Thomas G. Zimmerman and Jaron Lanier, a virtual reality pioneer responsible for codeveloping and commercializing the DataGlove who had made a failed attempt at a similar design for Nintendo earlier. Mattel brought in Image Design and Marketing's Hal Berger and Gary Yamron to develop the raw technology into a functional product. They designed Power Glove over the course of eight weeks. The Power Glove and DataGlove were based on Zimmerman's instrumented glove. Zimmerman built the first prototype that demonstrated finger flex measurement and hand position tracking using a pair of ultrasonic transmitters. His original prototype used optical flex sensors to measure finger bending which were replaced with less expensive carbon-based flex sensors by the AGE team.

Power Glove (band)

Power Glove are an Australian electronic music and synthwave duo from Melbourne, Victoria. They provided the soundtrack to the 1980s-influenced retro-futuristic video game, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (April 2013). The soundtrack met with critical acclaim.

History

Power Glove were formed in Melbourne as the electronic music, synthwave duo of Michael Biehn and Michael Dudikoff.

The duo's music gained widespread attention with the track "Hunters" featured in the 2011 Canadian independent film, Hobo with a Shotgun and the track "Vengeance" was used in the 2012 film, The ABCs of Death. Their first extended play, the four-track EP 1 (aka So Bad), was released in January, 2012. Tracks by the group have appeared in various artists' compilation albums.

Michael Langley of CraveOnline website described how Dean Evans of Ubisoft contacted the group, "it was like 'Hey, I'm Dean, I'm from Ubisoft Montreal. I totally wanna get you to score a game.' And they're like 'Ah, fuck off. This has got to be a joke.' I'm all 'No, no, no, it's totally real!'" The duo provided the soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (April 2013), which is a 1980s-influenced retro-futuristic video game.