1989 was a good year. Bat fever was sweeping the world (literally the whole globe!) with the release of Tim Burton's phenomenal Batman. We also got a look into the future (now the past.....*Sobs*) with Back To The Future II, and the Ninja Turtles craze was at it's peak. The world of gaming also took a step up with the release of Shadow Of The Beast on the Amiga. The 16-Bit home computers and the Sega Megadrive were starting to come in to their, own but the Nintendo NES still had some mighty fight in it, and so a deal was struck between Nintendo and Universal pictures to produce a kids adventure film which would feature heavy product placement.
The Wizard was released in 1989 to some mixed reviews, but has since become a cult classic for it's retro games theme and it's unusual stance of lightly tackling some taboo issues.