We’ve seen the Nintendo Power Glove shoe-horned with various adaptors to work on game consoles, including the PS5, the Xbox Series S, and the modern Nintendo Switch, but will it work with a modern iPhone?
That’s the question asked by Niles of the Will It Work? YouTube channel. Niles prides himself on using the Power Glove to play games that were never intended to work with the 1989-vintage hardware, and although he’s had some success with getting it to work on modern consoles, he was surprised with how well the iPhone 14 took to the Power Glove.
For those unaware, the Power Glove was created by Mattel Corporation as an accessory to the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The Power Glove lets you live out your cyberpunk fantasies by letting you play video games using a very early attempt at motion control. The Power Glove uses several ultrasonic sound sensors to determine where the glove is positioned and allows players to control the motion of on-screen objects.
It didn’t work all that great for regular Nintendo games and there were virtually no games built specifically for the Power Glove, so it was relegated to the dustbin of gaming history as an interesting but failed product. It has since received a cult-like following thanks to its use in several shows as a sci-fi prop.
To get the Power Glove to work on an iPhone, which notoriously hates USB controllers, Niles first had to get a Lighting Cable to USB adaptor and then use the Titan One device to change the Power Gloves output to mimic the same output as PS4 Remote Play. This tricked the iPhone 14 into thinking the Power Glove is actually a PS4 controller, with the glove’s motion mapped to the left control stick.
Niles was able to play Frogger and Goat Simulator through Apple Arcade without any issues. In fact, it even seemed to perform better than his previous attempts on the Switch and PS5.
“The iPhone 14 and the Nintendo Power Glove absolutely can work together,” noted Niles. “Perhaps even a little bit better than I was expecting before I started this experiment.”
Niles is running out of devices to run his Power Glove on, but with the inexorable march of technology, I’m sure it won’t be long before a new device catches his eye.
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