It’s easy to forget just how ubiquitous Nintendo had become by the end of the decade. The NES had been in homes for over four years, and the shift from after-school hobby to cultural mainline was well underway. The Wizard didn’t cause that shift, but it marked it – a theatrical release built entirely around the iconography of a home console.
For anyone raised on Sunbow-type assembly lines – 65-episode cartoons designed to move plastic – this wasn’t new. That said, I’ve always had a soft spot for this pre-teen road movie, in spite of being just old enough at the time to scoff at the obvious marketing drive behind it.
If anything, it was nice feeling some legitimacy about the countless hours we’d spent on our living room carpets playing video games.
No, we weren’t playing, we were training. -Pop
The Wizard arrived on Home Video this week in 1990, after a December 15th, 1989 theatrical release.