Retro Blast: The Power Glove Instruction Manual from 1989

Over the week­end, my boyfriend was at his parent’s house dig­ging through some boxes of old junk in the base­ment when he unearthed some­thing that could prac­ti­cally be con­sid­ered an archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­ery by gamer’s stan­dards: the orig­i­nal Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual from 1989!  And in almost per­fect condition!

As soon as I got over my imme­di­ate jeal­ousy that he owned the Power Glove as a kid and I didn’t, I began to won­der if it might be worth anything—not nec­es­sar­ily in terms of money, but worth the infor­ma­tion and nos­tal­gia.  After all, only 100,000 Power Gloves were sold in the U.S, and how many of them still have the instruc­tion man­ual intact?  Although I’ve played with a Power Glove before (and was thor­oughly dis­ap­pointed by the expe­ri­ence), I can’t recall ever hav­ing seen an orig­i­nal instruc­tion man­ual.  So I did a few Google searches to see what was out there.

To my sur­prise, I couldn’t find a com­plete scan of the man­ual; only this text ver­sion, and a few scanned images of ran­dom pages.  And that’s really too bad, because the Power Glove man­ual is a ver­i­ta­ble gold­mine of lulz.

I knew what I had to do. (Skip Ahead to Down­load)

Lucas is a Lie

Just from a casual glance through the thirty-five page instruc­tion man­ual (yes, thirty-fucking-five pages!) it is read­ily appar­ent how com­pli­cated the Power Glove is to use.  Can you imag­ine giv­ing this thing to an excited lit­tle kid and then wit­ness­ing their sheer dis­ap­point­ment when they couldn’t get it to work because GOD DAMMIT you have to pro­gram it first using a series of com­pli­cated ges­tures and button-pressing sequences.  And if it still didn’t work (which it inevitably didn’t) you were encour­aged to call a 1–900 Mat­tel num­ber for “assis­tance” and charged $1.50 for the first minute, $.75 for each addi­tional minute.

In real­ity, this “new dimen­sion of game­play” the man­ual describes is a far cry away from those rad moves Lucas showed off in The Wiz­ard. I guess that’s why Mat­tel felt it was nec­es­sary to dumb things down for the kiddies.

Enter “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”

Meet “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”, a pair of white, non-threatening, casually-dressed car­toon char­ac­ters who exist solely to explain away the com­plex­i­ties of oper­at­ing the Power Glove with help­ful illus­tra­tions and what can best be described as church pam­phlet humor.

But are “G.M.” and “L.D.” (as they like to call each other) all that they seem??  Look a lit­tle closer and you’ll see that Lit­tle Digit, a naive boy of about ten, has a habit of get­ting him­self into some ques­tion­able sit­u­a­tions with Glove Mas­ter, an older gen­tle­man who refuses to take his jacket and sun­glasses off even though they are both clearly indoors:

What the hell is the “Sens­ing Zone” and what is Glove Mas­ter doing with his hands hid­den behind the TV?  Also, appar­ently Glove Mas­ter likes to com­mu­ni­cate via his crotch:

Didn’t I say it was a gold­mine?  For an amus­ing if slightly creepy snap­shot of video gam­ing life in 1989, I highly rec­om­mend you read the whole thing, which was painstak­ingly scanned and PDF’d by yours truly.

Down­load

You can down­load the full scan (PDF for­mat) from Rapid­Share here:

Nin­tendo Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual — 1989 (PDF)

You’re wel­come, Internet!

Like 8-Bit Music? You’ll ♥ Leeni

She’s got two Game­boys and a microphone.

A girl after my own heart, Leeni is a 26-year old who spent much of her child­hood firmly planted in front of the Nin­tendo.  Influ­enced by 8-bit artists on MySpace as well as clas­sics like The Bea­t­les and Elias Smith, Leeni’s music is an enjoy­able  blend of the Gameboy’s famil­iar square synth sounds, her own voice and instru­men­ta­tion, and clever song­writ­ing.  With youth­ful, har­monic vocals lay­ered on top of those unmis­tak­able 8-bit bleeps and blops, Leeni’s music sounds rather like your Game­boy had a lovechild with that nerdy cho­rus girl you knew back in high school.

I dis­cov­ered Leeni’s music quite by acci­dent, brows­ing through ran­dom J-Pop selec­tions on Spo­tify, and some­how link-hopping my way to Leeni’s page via “Related Artists” links.  (By the way, if you’re not using Spo­tify yet, you’re miss­ing out on a truly amaz­ing music expe­ri­ence.  Per­haps I’ll write a sep­a­rate post about it soon. You can read my thoughts on Spo­tify here.)  “Head­phones On Your Heart” was the first track I lis­tened to, and imme­di­ately fell in love.

Have a listen:

Leeni already has two albums under her belt, each with a dis­tinct sound.  The first, 8 Bit Heart, is like an upbeat, happy-go-lucky romp through a bright, col­or­ful Nin­tendo game.  Her sec­ond album, Labyrinth is much darker and more down­tempo (think Super Mario Bros. under­world or Leg­end of Zelda dun­geon music) but still an enjoy­able listen.

Sure, there’s lots of other 8-bit artists out there, but Leeni has a unique musi­cal and lyri­cal style all her own. Most of the 8-bit music I’ve heard ranges from juve­nile to obnox­ious; fun but for­get­table retro-tunes that pan­der to your Nin­ten­dostal­gia. Leeni is dif­fer­ent and def­i­nitely worth a listen.

Nintendo at E3: Epic Yawn, for the Most Part

Fol­low­ing along with Nintendo’s E3 press con­fer­ence on Twit­ter, the live reac­tions were less than enthu­si­as­tic.  Well, it’s no won­der with a pre­sen­ter like this:

Does she look excited about Nin­tendo to you?

For the most part, Nintendo’s pre­sen­ta­tion ambled along like an old woman with a bad hip.  The over­all expe­ri­ence was so blah, #nin­tend­o­fail was in dan­ger of becom­ing a trend­ing topic for a while there.

These were the lowlights:

• Wii Fit Plus — Some minor improve­ments to Wii Fit, such as omit­ting wait-times between exer­cises and the abil­ity to tar­get spe­cific areas.  Riveting!
• Wii Motion­Plus — Add-on hard­ware to make the Wiimote sen­sors more pre­cise.  Will run you about $20 for some­thing that makes the Wii func­tion the way it’s sup­posed to.  Oh and by the way, some new games will require it, like Red Steel 2.
  (notic­ing a trend here with the tack­ing “Plus” onto everything?)
• Ter­ri­ble scripted jokes between Bill and Reggie.
• Final Fan­tasy Crys­tal Chron­i­cles: Crys­tal Bear­ers — Yet another Final Fan­tasy title…
• Women’s Mur­der Club: Games of Pas­sion — New “inter­ac­tive fic­tion” game series for DS, adding another nail to the cof­fin of real adven­ture games.
• Style Savvy — Yet another brain­less pink-packaged game aimed at tweenaged girls.
• DSi cir­cle jerk: over 1M units sold in less than 2 months, and DSi gamers will soon be able to share pho­tos on Facebook.
• Wii Vital­ity Sen­sor — Periph­eral that mon­i­tors pulse rate, ner­vous­ness, etc. I don’t even know what the fuck to say about this…

I’m on the fence about:

• Leg­end of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — Demo playable at E3 this week, but didn’t like the few screen­shots we saw.
• Mario vs. Don­key Kong — Play­ers will be able to design their own lev­els, game­play looked kinda fun.
• Golden Sun DS
• War­i­or­Ware DIY — Gamers can design their own minigames from scratch & share with friends; kinda neat, I guess.
• Res­i­dent Evil: The Dark­side Chron­i­cals — Another on-rails shooter from the RE franchise.

But there were a few sprin­kles of cool:

• Wii Sports Resort — Bas­ket­ball, archery, sky­div­ing & more.
• Super Mario Galaxy sequel — yes, yes, yes!  The demo looked awe­some, the graph­ics bright and beautiful.

And then, sav­ing the best for last, Nin­tendo made up for much of its E3 snorefest with the announce­ment of…

Metroid: Other M

Okay, seri­ously, I want this game NOW!

Update: Penny Arcade sums up my feel­ings exactly.

Sony PS3 Sales Slip, Not Surprisingly

Today CNN Money reports that sales of Sony’s PS3 have plum­meted 19% from last year’s fig­ures and the con­sole is lit­er­ally “dying on the shelves.”  Mean­while, Xbox 360’s 2008 sales have improved over 2007 and Nintendo’s Wii con­tin­ues to be a sell­out since its launch.

So why am I not surprised?

Huge Pric­etag

When it launched in Novem­ber 2006, the PS3 cost $500 for a 40G model, and $600 for a 60G model.  And that price only included one con­troller and no games.  Who could afford to spend that kind of money on a bare-bones video game con­sole?  Cer­tainly not me, and I’m a sin­gle adult in the 18–35 demo with a great job who loves video games–their tar­get mar­ket.  So I can’t even imag­ine how par­ents strug­gled to afford this price-bloated piece of plas­tic plus a $60 game game or two, try­ing to give their kid a merry Christmas.

But even though the console’s price has dropped sev­eral times and there’s now a wider range of mod­els to choose from, the still-pricey PS3 con­tin­ues to strug­gle.  If Sony’s con­sole sales hadn’t been dis­ap­point­ing since launch, I might chalk it up to the reces­sion, but that’s not easy to do when nearly every other game com­pany seems to be thriv­ing despite the economy’s cur­rent hard knocks.

Con­sole Competition

When it comes to video games, Sony is a rel­a­tive new­comer to the scene com­pared to Nin­tendo who has main­tained a huge fol­low­ing since the orig­i­nal NES ignited a love for video games in many of our hearts as kids in the 80s.  And over the years, Nin­tendo has always put out qual­ity sys­tems (I like to pre­tend Vir­tu­al­Boy never existed) with great libraries of games that have been fun and inno­v­a­tive.  The Wii, despite its silly name, was des­tined to be just as suc­cess­ful.  So why did Sony think it was a good idea to choose a launch date for PS3 so close to the Wii’s?  This is where I think they really under­es­ti­mated the competition.

The PS3 also launched at a time when the Xbox 360 had been out for a year already.  But Microsoft had been qui­etly bid­ing its time improv­ing the 360’s hard­ware, build­ing up a solid library of games, and win­ning play­ers over with its Xbox Live expe­ri­ence.  If Sony was expect­ing 360 own­ers to buy a PS3 as well, they cer­tainly didn’t have much of any­thing new to offer.  I’m will­ing to bet that most peo­ple who already owned 360s went out and bought Wiis instead.

Noth­ing New to Offer

Sure the PS3 has “amaz­ing graph­ics”, which has been its main sell­ing point.  But is that all that really mat­ters to gamers?  Sony’s sales have indi­cated oth­er­wise.  Other than improved graph­ics and offer­ing a Blu-Ray player at a time when most peo­ple didn’t even know what Blue-Ray was, what else did the PS3 offer?  Cer­tainly not an impres­sive library of games or inno­v­a­tive design over its pre­de­ces­sors.  Even the PS3’s con­troller design was more of the same.

Dis­ap­point­ing Game Library

The PS3 launched with a pretty under­whelm­ing selction of games that either nobody heard of, or titles that had already been out a long time on the 360.  Com­pare that to Nin­tendo Wii, whose launch titles included mega hits like The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Cor­rup­tion.  Sony should have off­set the console’s huge pric­etag by at least offer­ing more com­pelling titles, espe­cially at launch.  If a con­sole has great games, gamers tend to over­look the price, no mat­ter how ridicu­lous.  After all, what good is a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior video game sys­tem if it doesn’t have good games?   Like many, instead of buy­ing a PS3, I waited to see if any titles would launch later on that com­pelled me enough to pur­chase this sys­tem.  Two years later, I’m still wait­ing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see what Sony does to try to win over gamers and dig itself out of its hole.  CNN sug­gests deep price discounts–that would cer­tainly help.  I guess.  My advice to Sony: count your losses and just focus on Playsta­tion 4.

6 Geeky Things I’m Thankful For

Thanks­giv­ing is just two days away. Come Thurs­day I hope to be in a full-fledged turkey and wine-induced coma, sur­rounded by fam­ily and friends, kick­ing off a bliss­ful four days of gam­ing, couch­ing, Net­flix­ing, and left­overs. Gear­ing up for the long week­end has got me think­ing about all the geeky things I’m thank­ful for.

Here’s a look back at 2008 from a grate­ful geek girl:

The Tales of Bee­dle the Bard

I’m thank­ful for The Tales of Bee­dle the Bard, the new children’s fairy tale book and Harry Pot­ter com­pan­ion piece from one of my favorite authors, J. K. Rowl­ing. Since 1997, I along with most of the world have adven­tured along­side Harry in his seven-year bat­tle against You-Know-Who, and like so many other fans, was depressed when the series came to its heart-wrenching con­clu­sion last sum­mer. Look­ing for­ward to the book’s release this Decem­ber 4th, when I and legions of Pot­ter fans can delve once again into a small piece of the wiz­ard­ing world.

The Dark Knight

I’m thank­ful that The Dark Knight was a piv­otal box office phe­nom­e­non, and arguably one of the best super hero movies ever made. I’m thank­ful that Heath Ledger will be remem­bered for one of the most riv­et­ing and bril­liant per­for­mances ever known to big screen vil­lainy. I’m thank­ful that this movie has defined the new stan­dard against which all future super hero movies should be judged, and I’m opti­mistic that Hol­ly­wood will start pay­ing attention.

The New Xbox Experience

I’m thank­ful for the New Xbox Expe­ri­ence, and Microsoft’s part­ner­ship with Net­flix to bring the “Watch It Now” movie ser­vice to the Xbox 360 con­sole free of charge. Net­flix sub­scribers that own an Xbox 360 no longer have to face the inevitable deci­sion to shell out $100 for a Roku Net­flix player, yet another periph­eral that would clut­ter up our home enter­tain­ment sys­tems. I’ve found the high-quality stream­ing ser­vice to work absolutely per­fectly. It’s just too bad about Sony’s sour grapes.

Wii Fit

I’m thank­ful for Nin­tendo and their seem­ingly end­less inno­va­tion when it comes to pro­duc­ing fun and easy to learn yet chal­leng­ing games for the Wii, most notably 2008’s sim­ple but sur­pris­ingly effec­tive title Wii Fit. While Wii Fit cer­tainly doesn’t score any points for breath­tak­ing graph­ics or intense game­play, there is some­thing to be said for any game (or non-game) that moti­vates us lazy gamers to get off the couch and get physical—and have fun doing it.

The Twi­light Saga

I’m thank­ful for Stephe­nie Meyer’s ridicu­lously cheesy Twi­light Saga, whose sopho­moric books man­aged to com­pletely suck me in for a good two weeks of unadul­ter­ated guilty plea­sure read­ing, the per­fect anti­dote to a stress­ful month . I’m also thank­ful that the equally cheesy and unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous Twi­light movie—which grossed $70 mil­lion on its open­ing week­end, thanks to dreamy Rob Pat­tin­son—made for one of the most enter­tain­ing and mem­o­rable girls’ night outs I’ve had in a long time.

Wrath of the Lich King

I’m thank­ful for Wrath of the Lich King, the lat­est and great­est expan­sion to the sec­ond life I know as World of War­craft, which gave me the excuse to get back in touch with old guildies and good friends (some vir­tual, some real) and fall in love all over again with the sheer awe­some­ness of this game. Bliz­zard has really out­done them­selves with this release. The stun­ning visu­als and beau­ti­ful music score alone were worth the wait. Indeed, things were get­ting pretty bor­ing around Aze­roth until you showed up, Arthas.

Look­ing for­ward to all the geeky things 2009 will bring!