In 1989, Nintendo's marketing promised kids a cyborg gauntlet straight out of RoboCop that would let them reach into the television. The Power Glove sold nearly a million units on that promise and was, functionally, a nightmare. This episode reveals that Nintendo did not design it at all: the concept came from Grant Goddard and Samuel Cooper Davis at Abrams Gentile Entertainment, it was manufactured by Mattel and PAX, and its technology descended from the VPL Data Glove developed by VR pioneers Thomas Zimmerman and Jaron Lanier and used by NASA.

We walk through the eight-week sprint to turn thousands of dollars of laboratory hardware into a $75 toy, and the anatomy of the downgrade: fiber optic flex sensors replaced with conductive ink strips, 8-bit finger resolution slashed to 2-bit with only four positions, no pinky sensor at all, no yaw  ...