Nintendo
The Nintendo had a fair share of accessories from the common to the obscure. Here are a few worthy of mention:
| The Nintendo Zapper | |
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The Zapper was shipped with the original console so that it could be used to play the Pack-In game “Duck Hunt”. It used a light sensor that would respond to certain areas of the screen, letting you hit clay pigeons, criminals, and of course, ducks.
The only negative to this (other than the fact that it actually resembled a real gun) was that very few games built in the capability to use this accessory. There were a series of ‘trick shooter’ games that could use the device and a few first person shooter games. Otherwise, this remained in a box for most of the life of the console |
| The Power Pad | |
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The Powerpad was a revolutionary controller that allowed one t0 stomp (barefoot of course) on various large buttons to emulate running, jumping hurdles, dong fighting moves and many other unique techniques for a truly different gaming experience. This product was released by Bandai originally and later was bought by Nintendo, and yes… it is the prototype for the famous dance pad for playing Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). It also was the precursor to the Wii Fit pad that has become a totally new way of using the game systems for personal health.
Suffice to say, however, the generation using this device were not exactly known for their desire to be physically fit (I sure wasn’t) so the mainstream American game player was not all that interested in having to work out and the device only succeeded in popularity in a niche market. |
| The Power Glove | |
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The most infamous accessory of all Nintendo’s original accessories, was the ill-fated “Power Glove.” The accessory was large and rather bulky, only suited for right-handed users, and was much more complicated than it should have been. Although the device did allow for a much longer list of controls and initially used a motion sensor (in the top part above the knuckles), it was thoroughly imprecise and rather uncomfortable. To make matters worse, there were only two games designed with the Power Glove as the main controller, a beat-em-up game and it’s Pack-In game “Super Glove Ball”. The device was actually amazingly sophisticated as it featured carbon compression sensors for finger flex detection, and could comprehend 2 separate motions per finger. However, it had to be pared down considerably to be affordable for the mainstream gamer market and thusly was not very successful.
The true ‘nail in the coffin’ for the Power Glove was in the Nintendo produced movie (read ad campaign) “The Wizard.” Which featured a gamer who was making his way to a gaming championship to prove he was more than just a weak nerd. His main enemy weilded the Power Glove on his trench-coated body and held it up to the main character uttering the ultimate device killing words: “I love using the PowerGlove! It’s so BAD!” (Facefault). |
