It's so bad. Like, bad as in good. So goes the quote from the thoroughly surreal eighties movie The Wizard, about a bunch of kids shepherding their autistic brother across the country to a gaming tournament. The glorified ninety minute Nintendo advert was used to debut the Power Glove, a gaming peripheral which was supposed to revolutionise the way you used a NES in the same way the U-Force was. It was, obviously, about as successful. Because none of us are using Power Gloves today although, the Wii's motion controllers aren't a long way off. The nunchucks are cooler, too. Cooler than wearing a NES pad attached to a big grey glove? It sounds beyond belief, and yet! Though it was an officially licensed product, Nintendo was not involved in the design or release of the Power Glove. That honour goes to the geniuses at Mattel, who really should stick with toys and stay the heck away from gaming peripherals if this travesty is anything to go by. The idea was supposed to be a cross between a traditional controller and a motion tracking U-Force thing, with the addition of buttons labelled 0-9 which allowed you to input commands, such as changing the firing rate of the A and B buttons. And then you were supposed to control characters by waving your hand around, or something? Two games were released expressly to work with the Power Glove, and they were borderline unplayable, so imagine trying anything else with it.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
