The Wii Remote - Not Available in Glove Form

So while I've been playing my Wii and enjoying the new gaming paradigm of the Wii Remote, I still have this feeling of deja vu whenever I use it. You see, I was one of those kids who was snookered into getting the Power Glove for my NES. Or, more accurately, I was snookered into convincing my parents to get it for me for Christmas 1989. How could I resist? The previous summer I had seen The Wizard, believing I was seeing a movie instead of a 90 minute Nintendo commercial (although back then I probably would have seen it even if it had been advertised as nothing more than a 90 minute Nintendo commercial).

If you did not have the pleasure back in the day, take a moment and watch this clip. Now imagine watching that as a 12 year-old Nintendo-obsessed kid. How could you not be convinced that the Power Glove was the video game equivalent of Thor's hammer? The actual Power Glove commercials themselves portrayed it as an artifact of near god-like power which would grant you gaming supremacy over your friends who were still getting hand-cramp on those horribly un-ergonomic controllers. Finally, I could punch Mike Tyson in the face with my own fist - and not worry about him chewing my ear off in return! (Okay, granted this was long before that, but still, even back then we knew that Robin Givens wasn't just trying out some new "black and blue" shade of eyeliner).

The truth was sadly much different. Had the Power Glove been hyped less, history might have remembered it more kindly, but visions of total movement-based game control were replaced with the reality of Mario racing about the screen spasmodically as if having an epileptic seizure. The Power Glove ideally required small, subtle movements to work, which doesn't really mesh well with frantically paced video games, which tend to promote large, wild motions (I'm looking at you, Wii Sports Boxing). Even if you had the patience to master it, ultimately the technology just wasn't good enough to provide the level of control needed to play most games really well. It was kind of like trying to perform surgery with a steak knife - sure, if you practiced long enough you could probably get the job done, but even then trying to remove cancerous growths near major arteries with it is not a good idea, and why would you want to?

The Power Glove is routinely blasted as one of the worst video game controllers in history. But the truth is that it was simply ahead of its time. Roughly 20 years ahead of its time, to be exact. After all, the Wii Remote is simply a modern-day Power Glove that actually works - and isn't a dorky-looking glove. Also, the sensor bar for the Wii is infinitesimal in size, compared to the monstrosity of a sensor bar that came with the glove, which is nice.

All of this goes to demonstrate the truth behind the difference between idea and implementation - a truth discussed all the time over at techdirt (which, if you're not reading, you need to). Ideas are great, but what people really want is implementation. The idea of motion-based video game control is a great one - even 20 years ago. But if the technology is not there to make a decent implementation, then all you get is something that becomes a byword like the Edsel.

God bless,
AJ