We became rivals, both trying to convince the rest of the class that ours was the ultimate controller and amazing for giving a competitive advantage in Punch Out!, Rad Racer, and other games.
Secretly we both knew both controllers were completely useless and never worked, but we never dared admit it.
When I was about 12, I got a cheap powerglove for $20 from a used games place after they were all cast off as useless. I took all the guts out of it and sewed them into a golf glove to make it into a much less cumbersome device. I interfaced it through the PC parallel port, and was able to get it talking in its high resolution mode. That was really pushing the limit of what I could do at the time, so I never got much further than having a wireframe hand floating around the screen, but it was pretty impressive. I still have my construction somewhere!
(AVGN power glove episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYDuy7wM8Gk)
Edit: Oh yeah it was Johnny Mnemonic https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/