Super Glove Ball

In the late 1980s and through the early 1990s, there were dozens upon dozens of weird gimmicky accessories and addons for Nintendo’s grey box. Almost all of them were lame in amazing new ways, but the Power Glove particularly caught my eye. It was a glove (obviously) you wore that (it was said) would allow you to control games just by moving your hand. Big shock: it mostly didn’t work, and the game that it was bundled with to show off its capabilities was terrible.

You had sensor bars for your television that roughly resembled a giant ‘L’. Presumably you would place these on your television (across the top and down the side) and they would be able to translate the glove position and send that to the game, in this case Super Glove Ball.

I don’t really remember that much about Super Glove Ball. As young and gullible I was, I could tell that the controller didn’t work and the game was terrible. Super Glove Ball is kind of like Breakout, in that you have a wall of bricks that you have to destroy by hitting them with some magic space ball. You control this ball by grabbing and throwing it with a giant hand-shaped apparatus, which looks uncannily like your brand new controller.

Playing the game with the controller that designed to play the game was an exercise in frustration. It was kind of fun on the off chance that the controller actually worked. More likely you would move it too fast, or outside the range that the sensors could detect, or at all. Then the game would freak out and you would lose.

The developers were at least kind enough to provide support for ‘normal’ controllers which predictably made the game ridiculously easy. So easy in fact, that it was incredibly boring. Maybe if you really enjoy breaking bricks by throwing a ball at them you might get some kind of joy out of this game.

Don’t count on it.

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