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The Wizard (1989) - Easter Eggs
Rory Joscelyne • 4 February 2024
VGMP: AHH! He touched my refs!
I love The Wizard. It's so
bad.
The first major disagreement between Rory and Jamie in VGMP, Rory fully recommended The Wizard as a movie, whereas Jamie fully rejected it. It's not hard to see why this movie caused such a rift of opinion - it genuinely tries to be a deeper and emotional story, but it's still a Nintendo marketing product (and an out of date one, at that).
One thing The Wizard does have, is a lot of videogame references.
DOUBLE DRAGON and PLAYCHOICE-10 ARCADES
As this film pre-dates the SNES, the story revolves around the NES instead. The issue is that this is an adventure movie - meaning the characters have to be travelling. The way around this was to use a lot of PlayChoice-10 arcade cabinets - Arcade exteriors that simply housed an NES inside. These were official, and included 10 selectable titles. Sega did much the same with the MegaTech Arcade cabinets (Housing Mega Drive/Genesis consoles).
The first game to appear in the movie isn't until about 15 minutes in - Double Dragon. There's some footage shown, too.
NINJA GAIDEN
At the beginning, we see a NES is built into a diner table, where we first see Jimmy play Ninja Gaiden. This game comes back throughout the film and is the penultimate challenge at the tournament.
VIDEO ARMAGEDDON ADVERT
This is an advert for the final tournament of the movie, with Nintendo's logo in the bottom left of the image. This is likely just made up for the movie, but it's an interesting visual nonetheless.
SUPER MARIO BROS 2
Super Mario Bros 2 gets shown across the film a few times, played by Christian Slater and Beau Bridges (whose journey is separate from the main three characters). In order to shoehorn this stuff in, apparently Christian Slater finds his brother's NES in the back of his father's truck.
UNKNOWN ARCADE GAME
At one point, early in the journey, Jimmy challenges these two salesmen to a game of whatever arcade title they're playing in order to win the trio some money. Sadly we never see this challenge unfold, and we never see what game they're playing on the machine either. Definitely doesn't help that there are no decals on the cabinet to help us identify it.
TOP SPEED - Wrong Cabinet
An oddity in this movie, we see the main trio getting bullied by older kids at a roadside cafe. Jimmy is playing on an arcade cabinet for F1 Dream, but oddly this isn't the game he is actually playing. The game on the screen (and we get game footage of) is actually Top Speed by Taito. The other oddity is that Top Speed was never put onto the NES, making this the official Taito arcade version. This makes it one of the few non-Nintendo titles showcased in this movie.
LUCAS' GAME STACK
When we're first introduced to rival player, Lucas, he shows off his large stack of NES games. Can you help us to identify them all?
- Legend of Zelda (gold cart)
- unknown
- Duck Hunt
- unknown
- Metal Gear?
- unknown
- unknown
- unknown
- unknown
- unknown
- Super Mario Bros
NINTENDO POWER GLOVE
Cinema's most accurate quote, it's so bad. The Nintendo Power Glove was one of Nintendo's first attempts at motion controls on their home consoles. It was awful, barely ever worked and it's clear they faked the footage of Lucas playing with it in this movie. Nintendo would return to this idea with the Nintendo Wii which was much more popular, but not much better in practice.
RAD RACER
Square, later more famous for the Final Fantasy series, developed a racing game for the NES. The Wizard chooses this game for the first challenge against Lucas and his Power Glove accessory. We also see how bad the screen capture process was in this movie, as the full-screen capture is very washed out compared to the game footage visible on the screen when the camera is behind Lucas.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
This home version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was available on many home consoles of the time, at least in Europe. The Amiga version is undoubtedly a superior game. But in America, NES was pretty much the only game in town - as such it seems The Wizard were able to secure the rights to showcase the title in the movie.
NASTAR WARRIOR, FINAL ROUND
Halfway through the movie we get a one-off shot of this arcade/bar. It includes several arcade units, such as this unidentified pinball table. In the background we have three arcade cabinets. These were almost certainly brought by the film crew, as at least two of them appear in other scenes. The PlayChoice-10 arcade cabinet returns from the bus stop earlier in the movie (and will appear again in the Reno sequence), whereas Nastar Warrior (also known as Rastan Saga II) appears in the later Reno sequence too. I do not believe Final Round ever reappears, however.
NINTENDO HELPLINE
When we are first introduced to the Nintendo Helpline, we get a single passing shot of a few booths. This trio of screenshots doesn't include the guy the film focuses on, he'll be just below. The first guy here (in pink) is playing what appears to be TMNT, the second guy (in white) has an unknown title on his screen.
Between the second guy and the main Nintendo Helpline guy, we see two posters for Nintendo products tacked to the side of the office cubicles - one of which includes the famous "Now You're Playing With Power" slogan.
NINTENDO HELPLINE GUY
We get this yellow polo shirt wearing dude for a brief montage of this movie, but when we first meet him he has TMNT playing on his monitor, a Legend of Zelda hat (which he'll later be wearing) and a wall poster for NEX Game Magmax.
UNKNOWN GAME
I cannot identify the game playing on this guy's screen. This is supposed to be the same few seconds of conversation as the TMNT one above, but the game is clearly not
TMNT. If you can help us identify the game I'd be grateful.
METROID JACKET
Only momentarily visible, but the Nintendo jacket this guy has on the back of his chair includes a large Samus artwork (from Metroid) on it.
NES STACK, PC
A few things happening in this shot. Firstly there is a sticker on the booth with the word BEER on it. I can't make out the rest.
Secondly there is a PC visible from this angle, but I cannot find any information on it. It has SEPCO written on the desktop base, but looking up SEPCO yields no results. Anyone know what computer this is?
Lastly there is a small stack of games on top of his NES monitor. I can't identify them all, anyone able to help?
- unknown
- Super Mario Bros
- unknown
- Legend of Zelda (gold cart)
GAME FOOTAGE
There's a montage sequence of Jimmy getting good at multiple NES titles. To save some time, I've bundled them into this one slider gallery. I can't figure out which game has the guy shooting into-the-screen, if anyone can let me know I'll update this blog.
- Mega Man II
- Metroid
- RC Pro AM
- unknown
- Super Mario Bros 2
- Contra
GHOULS N' GHOSTS
While hard to fully make out from the image, the arcade cabinet to the far left (behind Jimmy) is a Ghouls N Ghosts cabinet, I cannot make out the arcade machine in the background to the right. There is also another machine that seems to start with the title "NEW G" and could be NEW GAME? Sadly we never see the rest of the marquee to identify it.
CHINAGATE and TOP SPEED
That Top Speed arcade machine returns (on the right), which will be more obvious in the wide shot. The arcade machine on the left is a game called Chinagate, except it doesn't seem to be actually playing Chinagate, but some large-sprite beat-em-up. Chinagate is a smaller platform-fighter, and looks absolutely nothing like this game. Are you able to help us identify what game is being played on the left?
RENO ARCADE - CHINAGATE, PLAYCHOICE-10
Here's the wide shot, you can see ChinaGate at the front next to the F1 Dream cabinet (playing Top Speed). The oddity here is that ChinaGate is definitely the game in the ChinaGate cabinet in this shot.
You can see an unknown Data East cabinet to the far left, next to the Playchoice-10 arcade machine. In the background we can see the unknown arcade cabinet from earlier, an actual Top Speed arcade cabinet (with Jimmy playing it!) and the game Hippodrome just behind them.
- Data East arcade game
- Playchoice-10 cabinet
- Top Speed (1987 - Taito)
- Hippodrome (1989 - Data East)
- Chinagate (1988 - Technos)
- F1 Dream cabinet (1988 - Capcom) - playing Top Speed
BABY PAC-MAN, KAGEKI
Later in the Reno sequence we get some new angles of the arcade, where we can see a bit of the arcade cabinet for Baby Pac-Man to the left, and Taito game Kageki just behind Jimmy.
- Baby Pac-Man
- Playchoice-10 cabiner (Playing TMNT)
- Kageki (1988 - Taito)
- Nastar Warrior (1988 - Taito)
RENO ARCADE
The final shot of the Reno Arcade gives us a wealth of cabinets to look at. Some I can't make out, so please let us know if you are able to identify any of them.
From screen left to right;
- Mehcanized Attack (1989 - SNK Corporation)
- Arkanoid (1986 - Taito)
- Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road (1989 - Leland Corporation)
- Playchoice-10 cabinet
- Baby Pac-Man (1982 - Midway)
- Playchoice-10 cabinet (unknown game)
- Kageki (1988 - Taito)
- Nastar Warrior (1988 - Taito)
- Robocop (1988 - Data East)
- Unknown cabinet (next to girl in pink top)
- Unknown cabinet (behind girl in yellow top)
- Gondomania (1987 - Data East)
- Punch-Out! (1983 - Nintendo)
VIDEO GAMES AND COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE
Does what it says on the tin, even if a shit name Magazine is seen in this movie - held here by Beau Bridges. He presumably takes it from Lucas from the preceding scene. Oddly, this copy of the magazine had a cover-story article about the Turbografx-16. In Japan the Turbografx-16 actually outsold the Famicom (The Japanese NES), making this an odd inclusion. I can only presume the filmmakers were so US-centric that they missed this glaring issue when making the film. Would have been akin to a movie glorifying the Sega Saturn including Playstation articles in it.
MAPPY
I could be wrong on this, and sadly it's on screen for all of half a second so there was little extra context, but I think this may be an intro to Mappy. If anyone can identify this NES game then please let me know.
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS' MONSTERS
I'm not going to show every single one, but I've included four of Universal's references as they appear in this movie. Charlie Chaplin, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and King Kong. This is because the finale of the film takes place inside Universal Studios. Not shown here, but in the movie, are Woody Woodpecker and several others.
NINTENDO COMPETITION, NINJA GAIDEN ROUND
A selection of shots of the awesome competition location in the film, as well as the Ninja Gaiden round.
SUPER MARIO BROS 3
The big reveal of this movie was Super Mario Bros 3 - an excellently timed promotion piece that gave American viewers their first ever footage of the upcoming Mario title! A brilliant bit of marketing flair for both the movie and Nintendo themselves. It helps that the sets are also given more dramatic lighting to make this seem even more epic.
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS PROMO
Not game related, but an oddity at the end of this movie are these two slides that are shown once the credits have rolled. I doubt anyone was still in the cinema this long after the credits began, but it's an interesting bit of history nonetheless. Oddly enough, no promo for Nintendo in this fashion. I guess the reveal of Super Mario Bros 3 was good enough.
That's a lot of references in such an old movie! I'll leave you with a screengrab of when one actor breaks the fourth wall and glares into the camera like a serial killer.
We hope you've enjoyed this look back through time, and please join our Discord to let us know if there's anything we missed!
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