Modder shows how they hooked their Power Glove up to Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit

The power of gaming in the palm of your hand

The Power Glove is one of the more infamous retro peripherals around, using a gauntlet to strap a controller fully onto your wrist. It’s meant for older Nintendo consoles, but modder Will It Work? on YouTube used the controller to wire it up to something a bit more modern in Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.

Will It Work has many videos, breaking down how they connect disparate controllers and consoles together. There are some wild connections like the Donkey Kong bongos hooking up to an iPhone, for example, or a phone to SNES mouse.

In the video, Will It Work shows off the Power Glove working with Pokemon Legends: Arceus, allowing the hand motions to move the player character around. Using the USB RetroPort and Titan One software, they can get the Switch to detect the Power Glove like it would any usual controller.

But they soon ran into some odd issues with the fingers being mapped as “sliders” and incorporating acceleration into the mix. Auto-accelerate could have been an option, but while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has that option, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit does not.

Will It Work wound up writing a script to create their own version of auto-accelerate, and it all comes together. They take a little joyride around their basement to show it off, cruising around with motion controls. They say they’re going to keep working on a way to integrate the actual finger controls of the Power Glove but for now, at least, there is a working Power Glove integration with Mario Kart Live.

Power cruisin’

Is it a feasible replacement? Probably not. And I imagine most Mario Kart owners don’t also have a spare Power Glove in their closet. It’s really cool to see tech toyed with in this way though, and seeing the Power Glove still add something fun and novel to a game decades later.

Controller modders are fantastic at coming up with fun ways to play a game, and the remote-control Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit seems like incredible fodder for more mods. Once we get better Power Glove integration, of course.