‘Power Glove’ inventor now contributing to Coffee Lab
Three and a half decades ago, Christopher Gentile was part of a major contribution to 1980s and ’90s popular culture. Today, he’s contributing to Butler’s small business community.
Gentile, co-creator of the Power Glove video game accessory, made an appearance at Main Level Games on Main Street on Thursday night, April 3.
While Gentile lives in New Jersey today, he makes occasional stops in Butler as part of his new job as chief information officer with the nearby Butler Coffee Lab — a local coffee shop known for its decorated “hot pods” and for providing employment opportunities for the disabled community.
It was through one of these occasional stops that Thursday’s meet-and-greet was scheduled in the first place.
“Christopher actually came to the store about a month and a half ago and asked if I had any Power Gloves for sale. I didn’t at the time,” said store owner Evan Miranda. “I asked him, ‘Do you collect for the Power Glove?’ He said, ‘Well, I actually invented it.’ And after he disclosed that, he was able to show some of his original test footage with the product from the late ’80s.”
Gentile showed some of the same footage to the public during his appearance at the store on Thursday, which showed a prototype of the glove being used for non-gaming purposes, such as a virtual musical instrument.
Gentile says he became involved in marketing with the Butler Coffee Lab due to his long association and friendship with the shop’s owner, Terry Kaiserman.
“I’ve worked with him in other projects in technology and stuff,” Gentile said. “He’s doing a great cause with disabled people working there.”
Decades before Gentile helped Kaiserman serve up coffee, he helped Mattel and Nintendo serve up one of 1980s video gaming’s most iconic accessories, the NES Power Glove.
In the late 1980s, Gentile’s company, Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, already had experience working with toy companies, having developed the “Visionaries” toyline with Hasbro. The company was looking to break into the newly-emerging video game market, which had found its footing thanks to the rise of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which made its full release in 1986.
“I was thinking, ‘maybe we should make games 3D,’” Gentile said. “(Hasbro) were offering to start the funding for it and started developing a 3D game.”
Researching novel solutions to control 3D games, Gentile happened across the VPL DataGlove, an early virtual-reality interface which cost $10,000 and was only accessible to scientific institutions such as NASA. Gentile’s company snapped up the marketing rights to the glove in the hopes of using it for their 3D game platform.
While the deal with Hasbro ultimately fell through, Gentile’s company found a new partner in Hasbro’s competitor, Mattel, who turned the glove into an alternative controller accessory for the popular Nintendo console. To make this possible, Gentile’s company had to pull off some technical wizardry.
“I ended up getting the $10,000 price down to a $28 ‘hard cost’,” Gentile said, referring to the amount of money each unit actually costs to produce.
The glove was short-lived in the retail market, only lasting roughly one year. However, it lives on as a pop culture icon of the decade in which it was made, largely thanks to its appearance in the 1989 film “The Wizard,” in which a character dons the glove and says, “I love the Power Glove. It’s so bad.”
The Power Glove was not Gentile’s last experience working in video games or virtual reality. He designed the “Ride the Comix” interactive ride for the now-defunct DisneyQuest land at Walt Disney World in Orlando in 1997, as well as a spiritual successor to the Power Glove for PC gaming called the Essential Reality P5.
On Thursday night, many local gamers stopped by to show their appreciation for Gentile’s contribution to pop culture and brought merchandise for him to sign. One even brought an ultra-rare original Power Glove carrying case.
Today, surviving gloves have found more of a use among hobbyists and hackers, including as a drone controller and in stop-motion animation.
