Hacker Cinema
The Wizard
1989 · Film · 100 min
Directed by Todd Holland
A boy and his brother run away from home and hitch cross-country, with help from a girl they meet, to compete in the ultimate video game championship.
1 positive1 mixed9 neutralfrom 11 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
I doubt there was a direct inspiration in either direction beside contributing to overall pool of ideas around wearable input devices. Only commonality I see is that they are both handheld/glove like computer input devices. Nerds and sci-fi authors have been dreaming about stuff like that since the beginning of personal computers in ~1970s-1980s if not earlier. There are plenty of other examples which could have been inspiration. Even the 2000 patent, references dozen older patents for handheld or glove like input devices some of which are much closer to the 2006 movie.
Looking at the history of wearable electronics can't forget about Steve Mann and all his crazy prototypes long before 2000.
Most well known movie examples are probably Minority report(2002) and The Wizard(1989) which showed Nintendo power glove.
Watching this reminded me of The Wizard movie from the 1980s. Which at the time (I was 7) I had no idea what ASD was, now it resonates in a completely different way.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/
A decade before Pokemon existed, I went to see the movie The Wizard, a Fred Savage vehicle that was basically a 2 hour Nintendo commercial. And in the lobby of the theater as I was leaving, there was a booth selling subscriptions for the brand-new Nintendo Power magazine. The first issue came with a free copy of Dragon Warrior for the NES.
So Nintendo was willing to bet big on JRPGs long before Pokemon came out.
This was one of the first games to truly capture my imagination. Zelda was the very first, but I was more an observer, watching my older brother play. Super Mario Bros 3 was one I was capable of playing all the way through, together with my brother.
There was also the way it was revealed, with the placement in "The Wizard". Hard to explain the degree of hype around that movie for elder Millenials of a certain age. The PowerGlove reveal, for one, but then the sneak peak at SMB3 at the end.
It's really cool that 3 worked on the same hardware more or less as the first Super Mario Bros. (Caveat that cartridges themselves could pack a whole bunch of technological tricks up their sleeve.)
I’m guessing you’re probably thinking of “The Wizard”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/
For those of you who missed the 80s and the movie The Wizard (1989) which immortalized the Nintendo Power Glove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw
Me too. I love this name because I grew up in Oregon.
I also saw the move from rotary to cordless to caller ID. I heard "Shh. I'm talking long-distance" and also played Commander Keen and used Trumpet Winsock to connect at the ultra-fast 14.4k to local BBS's and eventually Teleport, our local ISP.
We also grew up on Nintendo, I'd say that The Wizard starring Fred Savage is possibly an anthemic film since it showed off the most sophisticated game available (SM3) [2]
As a minor point of this group a major non-digital event event of this time was the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens [1], which was the most disastrous volcanic eruption in US history. (Offers some perspective on the wildfire smoke, perhaps.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._3#Development
> my younger brother will happily use bad to mean good
Here's an example of that from the 1989 movie The Wizard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVc6xuQfq9Q
He loves the Nintendo Power Glove. It's so bad.
The Wizard with Fred Savage.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/
So, maybe 30 years?
The Wizard is the best full feature advertisement ever made.
I'm making a joke but it actually is really good. I have re-watched it as an adult and I still loved it, but it feels like the type of movie that wouldn't be good if you didn't have the nostalgia factor.
My son wanted to see some Wizard movie with Nic Cage in it. Through Tivo I forked over $2 and was informed we had 48hrs to watch it before our rental expired. We managed to do that. That was last month.
This month, I'm browsing through my Netflix immediate-watchable list and what do I see? Yeah, that Nic Cage movie.