@popculture_historian: But it was a surprisingly good one. That probably had a lot to do with the cast, which included Beau Bridges, Christian Slater, Fred Savage, Sam McMurray, and Tobey Maguire in his first screen role. (Did you miss him? You probably blinked. Lucas’ friend with the mullet on the far left when they announce the finalists.) It pulled in over $14 million on a a $6 million budget, and it led to the Power Glove selling $88 million worth of the garbage accessory. The movie made it look cool, but it ended up being used once and forgotten by most. More deserving of its financial success was the other product they unveiled - Super Mario Bros 3. It sold more than 17 million copies, and is considered the best game made for the original NES, and one of the greatest of all time, period. The game Lucas is playing is “Rad Racer,” one of only two made specifically for the Power Glove. If you listen closely, when he punches in the code, you’ll hear the musical scale the aliens played to us in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” There were a lot of elite controllers back then, like the Acclain and the Advantage. But for my money, nothing beat the NES Max for ease of use, with a more ergonomic design than the OG controllers, and it actually had useful features. That turbo button got me out of so many holes in Metroid. Look, the Power Glove could have been amazing. It’s just that to make it work the way it was invented (for NASA), it would have cost $10,000. To make it affordable for us, it had to suck. The technology they (Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, not Nintendo) invented would continue to be refined and would eventually be perfected for the Wii, Microsoft Kinect and PlayStation Move. If you’d like to do a deep dive on the Power Glove, start here: The Smithsonian “Success Born of Failure: The Power Glove.” https://invention.si.edu/invention-stories/success-born-failure-nintendo-power-glove Mental Floss’ “Oral History of the Power Glove” https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91939/losing-their-grip-oral-history-nintendos-power-glove ##popculturehistorian##nintendo##thewizard##powerglove##gaming

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Thursday 18 September 2025 11:27:36 GMT