Making an NES to N64 controller adapter

I created an NES to N64 controller adapter so I could play with the power glove. It didn't go so well.
Edited by Joe Lambert

[@JoshBrak]

New project: make the Power Glove actually good?

[@AverageMichaelJordans]

He's been hearting all the commenters with this request... I am both worried and excited

[@Jurarigo]

But I love the Power Glove because... it's so bad...

[@stewiex]

A modern power glove(s) could be paired with VR to offer haptic feedback, perfect hand tracking and a better keyboard experience... Either virtually, also using haptic feedback or a physical layout that could in theory be overlayed with any button configuration.

[@RupeeRhod]

But what if... somebody fixed the power glove with modern understanding and tools?

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

Delightfully devilish Seymore!

[@GeekIWG]

​@@qwertykeyboard5901Why is there smoke coming out of your power glove, Seymour?

[@stewiex]

Yes!! Or a new glove inspired by the original to avoid any old glove bottle necks!

[@HubrisInc]

Somebody did, and they called it a wiimote

[@BobzBlue]

ducktape a joycon to ur arm

[@nict2]

Yup, this is power glove in a nutshell. Doesn't appear anything is wrong with your glove. Now that you have opened the Pandora's box of the power glove, the rabbit hole goes much deeper. Can you make the power glove sort of work by writing better input handling code for the device. It had some custom programmable modes for certain games, not sure if any of those make it easier to deal with the signals coming from the glove.

[@MuscarV2]

Rabbit hole*

[@rustkitty]

Supposedly the Power Glove is decent when used with games specifically designed for it (so only Super Glove Ball). If you can get the X and Y position, then at least it can be used as Wiimote-style pointer to emulate the N64 mouse and that's already way ahead of anything you could do with it on the NES. (Also I admire your restraint for not saying "It's so bad!")

[@Shanjaq]

I remember splicing the Rumble Pak actuator leads with a small battery-powered back-massage cushion through some external wires, specifically to play Starfox in first-person mode, it even used the cushion's D-cells since the voltage was same as the Rumble Pak's AAA cells. Probably stressed the transistors, but I was so happy it worked! :D

[@NotCubes]

"... but it [the powerglove] will make the thumbnail look better." I apprechiate both your honesty and you dedication.

[@steelejr]

As someone who made a homebrew nes/arduino adapter to play (and win) a game of call of duty, I love seeing how people take the relatively limited scope of the nes controller and expand it beyond what anyone at the time could even imagine!

[@ChunkySteveo]

Your love for the N64 and to push its use is great!! N64 forever!

[@dakisouls5316]

a dangerous man around an n64

[@electronkaleidoscope5860]

With stuff like the valve index in existence I sometimes wonder if it would be possible to actually make something like the power glove actually functional with modern tech. So much 80s stuff was so wildly ahead of it's time in concept, it's really wild to think about just how much stuff was made in that decade that was way more fun to yearn after than actually own

[@hectoralejandrotorrespopoc9232]

It would be much more reliable now, there is a documentary here in youtube about the technology of the power glove.

[@franciscofarias6385]

You could, but aren't VR controllers or Kinect the same thing, but better?

[@DemsW]

@@franciscofarias6385 I guess a glove would be better for certain experiences than holding a plastic thing. Though it would depend for sure

[@ZedDevStuff]

​​@@DemsWControllers have the advantage of having buttons on them for whatever you might need them for

[@electronkaleidoscope5860]

@@DemsW Mostly novelty, as jank as it was the fantasy of the power glove still casts a long shadow. You're not wrong through- as someone else pointed out in the comments Nintendo *did* remake it in the broad strokes- it's called the Wii-mote.

[@lively2774]

You're an inspiration James :) This is one of the last videos I'll be watching before I get set apart as a missionary tomorrow and step away from everything to go down a path I think is right. I'm hoping to get into electrical and software engineering when I return and you're definitely one of the big inspirations that has pushed me towards that. Your videos are awesome man!

[@Dithermaster]

The d-pad emulation in the Powerglove is indeed terrible, but get it into full 3D mode and it's an amazing bit of tech for the day. As far as I know, only one game supported that mode: Super Glove Ball. There is a complex initialization sequence that the NES sends to the glove to get it into that mode. I reversed-engineered it using my TRS-80 as a logic analyzer, and then a friend used the glove in 3D mode to run MIDI synthesizers.

[@james.lambert]

That would be fantastic to have! Is that protocol documented anywhere?

[@GoofyPoptart]

Dude....YES!! Im rootin for you man, you didn't let the Portal fault stop you! I respect this you should focus on stuff like this for awhile until you wanna get back into game making again, with everything you learned with Portal you can probably make a whole "New" game by now.

[@Minty_Meeo]

That N64 VR teaser at the end makes me wanna see you tackle making a stereoscopic 3D tech demo for the Gamecube. Allegedly, the hardware still supports it, but I've never seen a homebrew project use it.

[@Keavon]

It's great to see you're still making great content! And I have to say, the quality of your videos is really going up. Previously the way you came across on camera didn't have as much charismatic personality that's expected from KZbin but it's clear (especially from this video) that you're getting more practice with on-camera skills and letting that aspect shine in conjunction with the incredible technical content. I predict you'll have lots of success as you keep only growing the quality of both of those aspects. One last bit of feedback related to production quality is that you might consider trying to color grade or fiddle with camera settings to get an image with more dynamic range (it looks just slightly flat, most visibly in your last shot at the end of the video). It's been great seeing your content and production quality both continue to rise and I can't wait for more!

[@DavidLopez-rk6em]

I hope your channel blows up this year. This is unique content from a very intelligent person, combining engineering and video games. I'd really like if you could do this full time to produce more content

[@OmegPirate]

Man is a menace with that soldering iron safety😅😅

[@MyAmazingUsername]

I love the power glove. It's so bad! Great to see you making new things after Portal! ❤️

[@DerFinder]

people building their own little electronics and stuff idk how to call, is so cool imo my brother does stuff like that aswell all the time and it amazes me

[@Voxelstice]

Really loving those style videos of where you just reverse engineer something, make an adapter and make it work

[@Doubleelforbes]

As awesome as it was, I'm almost glad Valve scared you off the Portal demake! MORE SIR!!!! MOOOORRRREE!!!!!! Can't wait to see the VR work! I do appreciate your test console output strings :D

[@Dave01Rhodes]

The fun part about the NES controller protocol is the SNES uses an identical one with a 16 bit shift register. You can even plug a SNES controller directly into a NES (if you adapt the connector) and it works just fine. The NES only asks for the first 8 bits, and the SNES maps the dpad, start, select, and A to the same bits. I think it may have swapped B with X.

[@TheStone190]

Oh boi, à Nintendo 64 VR project seems really interesting. VR dev has it's own set of challenges. A lot has to go into details to reduce motion sickness, like slower movement speeds than regular games for example.

[@onooooooooooo]

If this channel ever hits 500k subscribers, it's going to have to split into 10min videos like this and 20+min videos that give a deeper dive into the engineering behind it.

[@hajilee4539]

I'll also throw my vote in for fixing the Power Glove, that would be an incredible project!

[@quantuminfinity4260]

9:26 Make the virtual boy we were promised?! Very excited!

[@einwombat5683]

One potentially interesting idea for a project could be to use rumble output from multiple controllers to control a small robot. Maybe something like the Labo thing that moves using Joy-Con rumble.

[@Kato0909]

New project! We believe in you

[@Melechtna]

"It's as old as me" I didn't need that gut punch today, thanks.

[@JD3Gamer]

The SNES controller works the same way electrically/software wise as the NES controller meaning it wouldn't be very difficult to add support for that.

[@rockstopsthetraffic]

Nice, I love this kind of stuff.

[@Clodd1]

The next project looks promising. Im excited to see it.

[@MegaMech]

"I love the power glove, it's so bad" - avgn

[@isodoubIet]

jackey vinson more like

[@preludeofme]

Glad to see you still coming up with amazing ideas and not letting the 'man' get you down lol

[@anon_y_mousse]

I wanted one of those so bad when I was a kid because of that movie The Wizard. I must have watched that movie a dozen times, and it still holds up today. It'd be awesome if you could make a better one given some of the newer technology we have. Maybe taking apart a Switch controller for its motion control tech.

[@PixelBrushArt]

You're really teasing us with that Portal 64 Box.

[@stolz_ar]

100% the Nintendo legal department is subscribed to this channel and they have a poster on the wall with a picture of James and a legend that reads "Eyes on Lambert".

[@flamshiz]

we love a nice hardware project

[@ProfessorCagan]

So like, for the Oculus, are simply wanting to send the video data to the headset and use the Oculis controllers to play the games? Or are you gonna try to make it more immersive by binding camera controllers to the head tracking? Great stuff as usual, man, came for Portal, staying for the new awesome projects.

[@setaindustries]

I would honestly love to see a vive tracker slapped onto this thing to make it actually usable

[@albert_vds]

Some idea to be able to connect to a N64: Wii controller, better than the Power Glove. A pen tablet, like a Wacom One, making drawing something in Mario Paint more precise. A printer, so you can print whats on screen.

[@CJinMono]

Getting a wiimote working on the N64 would also be a way to get a drawing tablet working. There were two tablet accessories released for the Wii, and they worked by docking with the wiimote.

[@SweetBean92]

Portal 64 getting cancelled really did unshackle James to do anything. He's going to be too powerful before we know it

[@razorx2024]

i'd love to see you play an n64 game like 007 with the snes super scope 😁

[@WohaoG]

that'd likely be impossible without a game specialized to work with the superscope.

[@HowieDune]

Hell yeah!! Can't wait

[@GetJesse]

Đang power glove has gotten expensive

[@lazerpipe]

OMG! A Rift DK-1 !!!! LOL. I still have mine from the kickstarter. My friends and I nicknamed it the headache goggles because after about 20 minutes of use we'd get a headache. I think it would be really cool to see a Wii Balance Board working on N64. Probably not too many retail games would work well with it, but maybe with some ROMhacking or homebrew games made with the balance board in mind, it could be pretty neat, and maybe only a slightly worse experience than the Power Glove, lol. 1080° Snowboarding, Pilotwings 64...🤔

[@FlamespeedyAMV]

RIP Portal 64

[@forcedfeedbackclassicgamer5499]

Mouse and Keyboard controls for first-person shooters on the N64 might be kinda cool... Getting a PS4/PS5 controller to talk to the N64 might be pretty straightforward, too, now that you already have a USB adapter...

[@altobase4212]

Getting the ps4/ps5 controller to work with goldeneyes 2 controller mode to essentially have modern shooter controls would be pretty neat

[@yomz0r]

N64VR MIND BLOWN

[@N1C0707]

Would love to see a steering wheel to n64 converter, for things like Diddy Kong Racing, Wave Race 64, and Mario Kart 64. One of those racing game steering kits could be fun to see.

[@NickLavic]

There was a steering wheel for the N64: the V3FX. It came with a hilarious VHS video cassette where it gets misused to shred lettuce and squash tomatoes. 😆

[@N1C0707]

@@NickLavic no way!! Thats amazing! I'll have to check it out

[@z20_Aleth]

Really cool stuff

[@YourTypicalMental]

We'll see what Valve will think of this.

[@al3xm]

hahaha

[@x0j]

he's more talented than any valve employee tbh

[@DavidZMediaisAwesome]

@@x0ji get people are upset about the project being canceled but that’s no reason to discredit valve’s developers. they’ve made really impressive things that deserve recognition

[@x0j]

@@DavidZMediaisAwesome uhh like what? The battlepass system? Thanks Valve!

[@YourTypicalMental]

​@@x0jnot even that. They basically invented loot crates with TF2.

[@bacon.cheesecake]

Not sure why, but I feel like playing portal with a powerglove would be cool, someone should try to make an n64 port of that game someday.

[@audiogear474]

Cool project. I sold my power glove several years ago. It looked cool but just didn't operate properly.

[@pegroj]

You could make the Power glove for the 64, using accelerometers and other modern sensors.

[@TheLukemcdaniel]

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

[@MNSweet]

Here is a rabbit hole for you to dive down: Disney Park Characters + Nintendo's power glove. During stage shows, you will see Mickey and his friends puppeting their mouths, eyes, and other body actuators with their left hand. Ever wonder why Kylo Ren and the Storm Troops at Galaxy Edge point when they talk so much? The predecessor of the Nintendo Glove. If you are interested in making a new glove get one of the modern signally gloves to play with. For more examples, I learnt about this from DistoryDan's Video on the topic. Also, I hope you do another post-mortem on Portal64 and perhaps release a censored code base free of any IP. You put a lot of work into the lighting and level layering. While I personally don't have the desire to develop for N64, someone in the community may find your frameworks invaluable.

[@MegaManNeo]

I'm really anything but creative with such things, therefore I'm even more impressed when people build such things. An USB adapter probably would be cool which reads either D-Input or X-Input controllers and translates those inputs. Also a memory card which actually saves its data in an emulator readable format to SD card. That probably would be what I would came up with.

[@Adoak1]

There's a product called "The Glove" by Reality Quest Factory that was an attempt at a Power Glove for the N64. It sucked too.

[@Chipstopher]

I would love to see you make an interface for the printing capabilities in Pokemon Snap and Stadium (normally only used in the special Blockbuster printing stations) that either lets you print to a modern day printer or at the very least save the images to a file on your computer.

[@othello7]

holy shit n64 vr would be crazy epic. also I think it would be neat to have an ethernet n64 extension for online play if that's even possible

[@Snoopey0]

What about that dreamcast fishing rod? You could fish like a pro in Zelda OOT

[@TheMindHavoc]

Maybe get a Wii controller to work instead of the power glove to play Golden Eye. So we can see that two controller action.

[@soviut303]

I'd like to see a follow up where you try to correct the issues with the power glove with an Arduino! I recall hearing the IR sensors are pretty sensitive to certain types of light, like candles. I wonder if maybe your LED lights are interfering?

[@Zhylo]

My thoughts also.

[@DFX2KX]

as I understand it, SNES controllers also use a shift register to store/send the button state just as an NES controller does.

[@DFX2KX]

Well they make LCD friendly light guns now, rigging one of those up (they are detected as a mouse) might give you a better goldeneye/perfect dart experiance than the power glove did, not that this is a bar to cross or anything. The Oculus might be more doable (in 3DOF) than you'd think, at least for the right game. your biggest task there will be deforming the video output to go int the headset so it forms a screen you can actually SEE. The rotation vectors RX and RY would map to the stick just fine, and the Rz would mostly go rotating the external view conversion. Now if you're willing to make an entire demo for it and use up two controller slots, 6dof wouldn't be entirely out of the question. It'd be... kinda cursed though, to put it lightly. would take all 4 ports to get a single CV1/Quest style 6dof controller in there, unless we're talking some REAL screwy abuse of button combos.

[@DFX2KX]

(addendum) actually if the polling rate of the controller ports is fast enough, you MIGHT be able to to get away with two ports for a headset and two controllers. provided the game is coded for it. your first controller has 14 buttons. use up the D pad and C-button states to make an 8 bit 'ID' number for whatever axis your analog input is currently referencing. there are 18 axis for two controllers and a headset, 26 if including the sticks and trigger/grips as analog. well within the margin if the libraries let you conduct such sorcery. the main downside here is how many cycles it'd take to get all of the position data into the N64, and thus how out of sync it'd all be. My VR legs quite stout but I would not play any 6dof N64 hack on carpet because my luch would cover my feet pretty quick LOL Given I have ALVR installed, I wonder how hard it'd be to try and track down the needed libs it would be, and/or code something cursed inMpuen to emulate the strange interface....

[@audiogear474]

A wii controller to n64 would be cool. If you think about it wii was almost like vr but you had a fixed screen. If the screen were on your head it would be just like vr.

[@gamingsucks5349]

I think you might need a crt tv for the power glove and also the gun for the nes for duck hunt works with only crt but 3rd party guns can play on a flat screen lcd so something you could do is hardware mod it or in software to make the power glove work

[@trudel669]

My N64 is hooked-up to a CRT. First thing I'd try with this adapter is Duck Hunt with a Zapper.

[@jamesoniris2647]

Now fight Master Hand with it

[@hudsonator7259]

I would recommend you to get a pi pico (or any rp2040) board so you can use the PIO, and the rp2040 even works with the arduino ide really well (but make sure to use the community board compiler) What i like about the pio is that you can have it communicate with the io and set internal registers to be read by the main program. You can even program the pio to automatically recognize and translate the n64 controller readings to a button map and have another pio translate the button map to say a gamecibe controller. Best part is, that you can have the main program getting interrupted, but because the pio is completely seperate, it can go on its own and simply tell the state of the controller whenever the main program asks, or vice versa.

[@ClockworkBastard]

I'm here just to put a like for a great dude.

[@marcelofrau8818]

imagine playing portal 64 with that :D

[@syncr0904]

The way you were talking in the beginning reminded me of Stuff Made Here

[@EO-fv3wc]

That was a great video! Gosh arduinos are such useful things, I really ought to get one.

[@MrChrissieleinchen]

Nice idea, i already built an adapter to use a snes controller on my commodore64 using an attiny84 :D

[@geminielectro]

Connect a Power Glove to an N64 because why not? ^_^ Love it. Next step, VR?

[@perryheun3047]

I don't know if there were any light gun games for the N64, but I could see a Wii remote being used as that with its rudimentary IR camera and B trigger button.

[@BowsettesFury]

I remember when I was kid and fell into the hype with it. Omfg was it ever terrible. No defects in yours though, it barely worked brand new. And mine the ink inside the glove started leaking with in a year. Coolest looking controller idea, WORST implementation second only to the 64 controller itself. But at least that one functions. 😂 Prog14 enter enter start.

[@CotyTernes]

Looks like the fumes are going right into his face. Huff em! please don't

[@Ragesauce]

Sega Actrivator!

[@rickmartens]

The power glove is OK on games designed for it!

[@fire-ballmc9741]

Snes might be a bit boring but it also had some fun accessories.

[@How2BEpic]

James about to play them ZX Spectrum roms in Goldeneye with an NES controller

[@adcaptandumvulgus4252]

You should make and redesign the power glove that actually works

[@megan_alnico]

Wiimote next? I know if you point the Wiimote at you from the screen and wear an infrared LED on your head. You can do head tracking which might be fun for something like Golden Eye. But for everything you want to do with a power glove the Wiimote is much better.

[@tepafray]

So if I recall. The powerglove had a few games it could natively communicate with, Super Glove Ball being one of them. I'd be curious if you'd be able to have more luck using the powerglove without it trying to mimick an NES controler.

[@bradybaker7650]

Id love to see the idea where to reload in goldeneye, you had to take out and put back in the rumble pak

[@jansenmccloud]

talking about goldeneye: there was an initial idea of the original devs to use the rumble pack to reload ingame (i read it in an early nintendo magazin before goldeneye got released). i wonder if it's possible to either map the "rumble pluged-in"-action to "B" (i think that's reloading) within the rom. or if it is possible to adjust the controller hardware, so that plugging in the rumble pak also sends a B signal to the console. 🤔

[@buddyguy4723]

The p5 glove is a bit of hardware you might find interesting.

[@Haffey.z64]

You should try to make a keyboard adapter for the N64, where it would work as the N64 keyboard.

[@fixorbricks]

I’d love to see dual shock controller on the n64

[@Fatone85]

I started typing this at 9:20: "How about N64 VR ?" Then 2 seconds later... Nice lol Doooo it!!!

[@liteniteTheOne]

I watched this whole video....and all I got was this visit of trauma past via power glove 😢

[@Keatosis_Quohotos]

I would love to see a homebrew that makes use of the disk drive addon

[@RealTal.]

What i think would be really cool is if you could connect a SAMMY keyboard controller for the gamecube and have it set up so whenever a game asks you to input text you can actually type the text in on a keyboard. like for choosing your name on a character select screen. a game that has you put in text alot would be animal crossing, for example.

[@franzusgutlus54]

I am sure with modern gyro/acceleration sensors (like they have in mobile phones) you are able to build a better power glove youself.

[@skyboy49707]

A fixed power glove + VR

[@bl3icom]

Gamecube to N64 might be cool

[@evileyeball]

So in theory if you had Two of your adapters you could plug a Four Score or Satellite into it and play 4 player NES games? The thing I want to see is an Adaptor that could some how interface with a R.O.B. and know when either Gyromite or Stack-up flashed him a command and activate the same command within him such that he could be used on real hardware but with modern Flatscreen Displays.

[@billydelacey]

Now make a finished version of Portal 64.