Recycled Gaming

This morning I started searching eBay for a NES Power Glove instruction manual and came across this eBay auction:

Thats right folks. Up for auction is a NINTENDO POWER GLOVE with motion sensors and manuals. This glove is great for either hooking up your nes nintendo console, fighting bad guys, or just a great addition to any Fred Savage collection. A cosmic wonder starting at a mere 99 cents. Good luck with this one folks. The power is in your hands…. Does not include the super babe pictured above. Godspeed. Shipping is 10 bucks. Paypal only please!

What caught my eye was the line “Does not include the super babe pictured above.” Hehe.

Since eBay will eventually remove the images after the auction is over, I wanted to archive the “super babe” picture:

So there you go. The picture in all its glory. “I love the Power Glove super babe girl. She’s so bad”.

Doing a little poking around this users other eBay auctions, they are also selling a boxed Nintendo power set complete with Power Pad, manuals, posters, etc.

Unfortunately no super babe in the pictures, but have no fear, she’ll be immortalized forever on Recycled Gaming.

Last week I posted about the NES Power Glove and how I never owned one as a kid. Well that has all changed as of today:

I couldn’t get an answer on a firm price from my friend, so I started to poke around eBay, local thrift shops, etc.

After a little searching I was able to acquire the Power Glove complete with the sensor bars, however no manual for $10.00 USD.

I tested it out last night and it works pretty good… at least for an accessory that didn’t do a whole lot back in the day.

I’m not sure how much I’ll use my Power Glove now that I own one, but it’s a pretty cool show piece.

A little about the Power Glove:

The Power Glove (1989) is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System designed by the team of Grant Goddard and Sam Davis for Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, made by Mattel in the United States and PAX in Japan.

Though it was an officially licensed product, Nintendo was not involved in the design or release of this accessory.

My next mission is to track down a instruction user manual for the Power Glove so I can figure out how to program it for different features and controls.

The Nintendo Power Glove… this is one NES accessory that was never part of my collection as a kid, however a good friend of mine owns one.

I’ll have to see about taking it off his hands if he doesn’t want it anymore.

In the mean time, check out this clip from The Wizard (1989), starring Fred Savage:

This movie was a huge deal back in the day for promoting Nintendo as a brand and also the Super Nintendo (SNES).

I’m thinking this movie would be a good addition to my DVD collection. Time to check Amazon.com and eBay I suppose.

To change things up a bit, I wanted to do another Nintendo accessory post like I did last night. Don’t worry, more game reviews and other nuggets are just around the corner.

One of the many controller options I have in my retro gaming collection is the NES Max. I currently only have one but I’m in search of a second. It’s always nice having at least two of the same controllers.

The NES Max was a gamepad that was released by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988.

Like many later controllers (such as the PlayStation’s and N64’s), it has “wings” which are basically handles that extend from the edges of the pad.

Unlike the standard NES controller, the Max has a small button-shaped item called a cycloid, that can be moved in directions for movement.

It functions similar to a joystick, however, it lacks analog response. The cycloid can be moved by the player’s thumb.

If you’d rather have a more traditional control, the cycloid area is surrounded by an 8-way control pad ring.

The controller is smaller in width than a regular controller and is slightly thinner. It also features turbo “A” and “B” buttons in addition to the standard buttons.

The Max’s official Nintendo part number is NES-027.

One of my favorite classic Super Nintendo accessories is the very rare Super NES mouse with official Nintendo mouse pad.

Of course I also have the Mario Paint game which came with it along with all the original paper work and manuals. Everything is in really nice shape. I don’t have the box though:

For those of you who are not familiar with this cool Super Nintendo accessory, here’s a little bit about it:

The Super NES Mouse is a peripheral released by Nintendo in 1992 for the Super Nintendo video game system (SNES). Originally designed for use with the game Mario Paint, the SNES Mouse was sold in a bundle with the game for $59.95 in the United States and included a plastic mouse pad. Soon after its introduction, several other titles were released with Super NES Mouse support.

and here is a little information about the Super Mario Paint game cartridge:

Mario Paint is a video game created by Nintendo for use with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and was released on August 1, 1992 along with the SNES Mouse peripheral device. Mario Paint is the most well-known game to make use of the SNES mouse technology. The game’s package was a larger than normal size in order to accommodate a plastic mouse pad which was included along with the SNES mouse.

Super Mario Paint is a pretty basic graphics program but we must remember it came out in 1992. We’ve come a long way since then and it doesn’t compare to programs in 2008 like Adobe PhotoShop and Corel Draw.

One thing to note about Mario Paint is there’s sort of a hidden gem on the cartridge… a fun game called Coffee Break which is a fly-swatting mini-game. It’s a fast-paced action game that takes full advantage of the Super NES mouse and buttons.

You control a gloved hand holding a flyswatter, which must swat flying insects on the screen, before the insect stings your hand in one way or another.

Each level contains a counter with how many insects were left before the boss appeared. There doesn’t seem to be any final level and the game will just loop endlessly from what I can tell.

It’s very addictive like Tetris. I played it for almost an hour today without even noticing how much time went by.

From doing a little research, there are well over 15 other games that use the mouse but I don’t own any others at the moment. That will soon change as I go in search of a few.

If you know of any fun Super Mouse games, let me know.

The Power Pad, known in Japan as Family Trainer, and in Europe and briefly in the United States as Family Fun Fitness is a floor mat game controller released in the United States for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It is a gray mat with twelve pressure-sensors embedded between two layers of flexible plastic. It was originally developed by Bandai.

Bandai first released the accessory in 1986 as the Family Trainer pack for the Famicom in Japan, and later released in the United States under the name Family Fun Fitness.

Soon after its American release, Nintendo bought the rights for it and rereleased it in 1988 as the Power Pad, along with the game World Class Track Meet, which was a rebranding of an earlier game.

The accessory is laid out in front of the video display for various games, generally plugged into the second controller port, with players stepping on the large buttons to control game play.

There are two illustrated sides to the pad: Side A, which is rarely used, has eight buttons:

While side B has twelve buttons numbered from 1-12:

Games using the Power Pad often test players on their timing and coordination, memory, “running” speed, or allow them to play music with their steps.

Games such as Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) can trace the lineage of their control mechanisms back to the Power Pad.

The Zapper was a light gun produced by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in 1985 along with the launch of the NES. At that time the body of the Zapper was grey as seen in my photo below, but soon after the color was changed to orange.

Unlike most modern light guns, it operated without a sensor on top of the TV and did not need calibration. It was surprisingly accurate despite this. The Zapper also emitted a very distinctive “KA-PANG!” when the trigger was pulled.

There only appear to be 17 games released in the U.S. that utilize the Zapper:

• Adventures of Bayou Billy
• Baby Boomer
• Barker Bill’s Trick Shooting
• Chiller
• Duck Hunt
• Freedom Force
• Gotcha
• Gumshoe
• Hogan’s Alley
• Laser Invasion
• Lone Ranger
• Mechanized Attack
• Operation Wolf
• Shooting Range
• To The Earth
• Track & Field 2
• Wild Gunman

If you know of others, let me know in the comments and I’ll update the list.

So how does the Zapper work? Taken from the official Nintendo Zapper manual:

The Zapper works by receiving the light from the screen. The contrast and brightness controls of the TV must be adjusted properly or the shots may not register. (The characters should be as bright as possible while the background areas should be as dark as possible.)

Connecting the Zapper to the NES: Make sure it’s connected to controller port 2. Usually you have a regular controller in port 1.

The range of the Zapper depends on the size of the TV screen, the TV adjustment, and surrounding light, however from my own testing, 6 feet seems to be fairly accurate. Anything beyond that your mileage my vary.