Nintendo Power Glove Used To Create 'Robot Chicken'

dotarray (1747900) writes "Despite its glorious introduction in The Wizard, the Nintendo Power Glove was, from all accounts, a bit of a failure. However, Dillon Markey has given the doomed peripheral a new lease of life — it's a crucial part of making stop-motion animation for Robot Chicken." The linked article doesn't have many more words, but the video it features is worthwhile to see how Markey has modified the glove to make the tedious work of stop-motion a little bit less tedious.

Comments

Power Glove was not helped by the Tyson shot

[damn_registrars]

The commercial shows the kid playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out with the Power Glove. The problem, though is it was completely, utterly, worthless for that game. Sure, moving like a punch would have your player punch. But pulling back your fist? That used a power punch (which would pretty much never land correctly as a result).

Best game for the glove? Hands down, Top Gun.

Re:Power Glove was not helped by the Tyson shot

[rHBa]

Best game for the glove? Hands down, Top Gun.

I can't imagine a game of Hands down, Top Gun lasting very long.

Re:Power Glove was not helped by the Tyson shot

[antdude]

AVGN proved it in his review episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... ...

The real problem with stuff like this.

[BarbaraHudson]

The real problem with stuff like is is that it brings out your inner child - "Gee, wouldn't it be fun to do some stop-motion animation". Of course, the reality is that it's as tedious as programming.

Re:Fist Bump

[FatdogHaiku]

"The Spinning News" Headline:
Power Glove Chokes Robot Chicken!

I think Nintendo Wii was powerglove 2.0

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Say what you want about the gimmickness of a Wii controller, but they did the powerglove to what it should have been. Props to Nintendo for sticking to getting something to the finish. My favorite Nintendo controller so far has been the SNES controller. It might not have analog, but it was a cerebral interface unlike some controllers where you had to adjust your grip to get to different buttons.

Re:I think Nintendo Wii was powerglove 2.0

[ArcadeMan]

The SNES gamepad is perfection.

Tiny analog thumb sticks are the worst invention ever.

Case closed.

Re:I think Nintendo Wii was powerglove 2.0

[Osgeld]

powerglove was not made by nintendo

"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[2] and PAX in Japan."

Re:I think Nintendo Wii was powerglove 2.0

[0100010001010011]

I don't think the true "PowerGlove" successor has come yet.

A smart glove like this could turn any ordinary squeeze ball into a chording keyboard. With Google Glass and other similar technologies chording keyboards and wearable tech would work for rapid next input without voice. Anyone that has played GuitarHero knows how a chording keyboard can work.

Re:I think Nintendo Wii was powerglove 2.0

[Blaskowicz]

And its D-PAD was reliable, more than the few Playstation controllers I have at home (for use on PC in SNES emulation mostly). How annoying that we can have multiple gigabytes of RAM but a properly working D-PAD is harder to come by.

Re:Seems like...

[ArcadeMan]

I have a fork that says "The ratio of people to cake is too big", does that count?

It's so bad...

[vbguyny]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:I like it.

[RDW]

He customodded a BT kb into his old glove, added tweezers and a fist bump 8bit sound chirp. What's not to love?

So, basically you're saying that you Love the Power Glove?

Re:Fist Bump

[Matheus]

By far the best usage of the Nintendo Powerglove... :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The glove comes out around 4:30 BUT honestly it's worth watching the whole thing if anything for the self-deprecation :-)

Re:I like it.

[SuiteSisterMary]

So, basically you're saying that you Love the Power Glove?

It's so bad.

wtf are you talking about

[gman003]

Tiny? Compared to what, an Atari joystick?

I have every generation of Nintendo controller out for testing and measuring. Every single analog stick is bigger, and has more range, than the D-pad on the SNES pad (which is slightly larger than on other controllers). So if your problem is that your thumbs are too big to finely use an analog stick, your thumbs are too big for a D-pad as well.

There's a reason analog sticks dominate the landscape these days. A D-pad simply doesn't have the sensitivity or the freedom of movement needed for a 3D gameplay environment. Even PC games know this - a mouse is used for any 3D game, rather than having two hands on keyboard.

Was the SNES controller good for SNES games? Of course. Nintendo actually experimented with analog sticks during the SNES's development, but couldn't find a good use for it with the predominantly 2D games the console was capable of. But look at the N64 controller - they still weren't sure, at launch, how best to control 3D games, so they made that weird controller you could hold three different ways. And then the analog stick proved to be so essential, later consoles had two of them.

The fact that this had to be explained to you makes me think you haven't actually played any games since the Super Nintendo.

Re:wtf are you talking about

[TheRaven64]

So, what you're saying is, the SNES controller is good for games where a gamepad controller is the best UI, but an analogue pad is better for games where a keyboard and mouse is the best UI?

Re:wtf are you talking about

[gman003]

Not necessarily - keyboard+mouse gives you one (really good) analog input, a gamepad gives you two analog inputs. The way it's normally mapped, it's WSAD for movement and mouse for camera, which is fine as long as you don't need precise movement. RTS, FPS, those kinds of things. Once you need analog movement as well as camera, a gamepad starts to be better - platformers, twin-stick shooters (obviously). Action games (like Assassin's Creed or Arkham) tend to be close to the crossover point, where a gamepad is better but keyboard+mouse is almost always sufficient.

Re:wtf are you talking about

[Blaskowicz]

A gamepad with single analog stick was easier to use : N64, Dreamcast. Goldeneye was the best console FPS with just one stick. Yes a second stick is useful sometimes I guess but the N64 gamepad is underrated, too bad it had that problem of eroding.

Re:wtf are you talking about

[gman003]

Goldeneye had, primarily, a 2D gamespace. The graphics were 3D, but altitude rarely factored into things (unless you played Oddjob).

Any game with a real 3D gamespace was brutal on the N64. Daikatana, for instance, although that one had more problems than just control issues.

Consider games as part of an information system. Data flows from the game to the user (display, sound, rumble) and from the user to the game (controller). The more data that can flow, the more complex the game can be without overwhelming the user. On the output side, that's why game designers push for higher resolution and framerates. On the input side, that's why we go for the maximum number of analog inputs (two sticks plus analog triggers, plus sometimes a touchpad or touchscreen), and cram as many buttons as possible onto the pad.

Re:wtf are you talking about

[Agent0013]

Except the dual analog sticks are always pushed to their limits. What's the point of analog if it almost impossible to use them gently. Walking on a game system controller is difficult. It is easier to just tap the stick full for a brief moment rather than try to edge it up until your guy starts walking, but oops, you moved it too far and you just ran off the cliff!

Re:wtf are you talking about

[gman003]

There's still data to be found. You get a precise angle, and you can do things with the velocity it goes to the limits at (see Super Smash Bros), and good players will actually use partial range.

And even with the limitations on the data, it's still way more detail than a D-pad gives you.

Re:Seems like...

[PopeRatzo]

...a small formfactor regular Bluetooth keyboard strapped directly to your wrist would be more practical than the entire glove for this, especially since needlessly constraining the hand and fingers doesn't appear to add any functionality, just inhibit movement.

The artist in the video seems to be doing all right.

Anyway, who's to say what's best for an artist? I mean, Picasso painted the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back and that had to really suck, not to mention it cost him an ear.

Re:A bit of a failure?

[Chibi Merrow]

Nintendo didn't make the power glove...

Re:Seems like...

[GrandCow]

He sits there and hits the left and right keys on the d-pad like he's having a seizure. Yes he's doing "all right." He'd also be doing the same kind of all right with an atari joystick wired up.

This is a man living out his dream of using a Power Glove to do something, and I salute him for that. He's not changing the world though, or making anything easier. He's purposely handicapping himself to do it. Yes, he ends up with his desired end result, but he could do it much faster and easier if he used a different tool.

Re:Seems like...

[Half-pint HAL]

+1 troll. :-)

Re:Seems like...

[Half-pint HAL]

Nope. He is doing things quicker than before, by doing things wirelessly. His previous tool was a USB numeric keypad, because the software he uses is designed to operate from a small number of buttons. The layout and size of the buttons makes the most frequent actions easy for him to find, whereas if he was using a full bluetooth minikeyboard, as per xlsior's suggestion, he'd have more buttons than he needed, and he'd constantly be hunting for the right key.

The only potential inefficiency is in the fact that the Power Glove goes on the right hand, so he's pushing all the buttons with his left, but the cost in time of using your weak hand is in the order of milliseconds, so it's hardly a big problem.

Honest-to-Goodness Functional Wearable

[Carcass666]

This is so simple yet so much more effective than many of the wearables coming out today. It is impressive, to me, because it fits in his workflow seamlessly. He doesn't have to change the way he works. The tactile keys and buttons not only give feedback (which haptic does poorly), but it makes it easy to hit them exactly the number of times you want (which mobile touchscreens do very poorly).

Technology like mainstream 3D printing will enable the creation of DIY peripherals like this. It's a great opportunity to enhance productivity for repetitive, laborious work.