Remember the Power Glove? It was a mostly awkward means of interacting with games back during the NES era, and was immortalised in the 1989 Hollywood flick The Wizard. It's since become something of a cult object in the world of gaming, inspiring adoration with older gamers (as well as a feature-length documentary), but this much-maligned peripheral is getting another chance of movie fame thanks to HBO's upcoming festive flick, 8-Bit Christmas.
Set in the late '80s, the film tells the quest of one boy to get a Nintendo Entertainment System, the hottest item with any self-respecting child. But alas! The NES is sold-out everywhere, so ten-year-old Jake Doyle sets out on a mission to secure one.
Here's some PR:
From New Line Cinema and HBO Max comes “8-Bit Christmas,” a humorous and heartfelt look back at the adventures of childhood. Set in suburban Chicago in the late 1980s, the story centers on ten-year-old Jake Doyle’s herculean quest to get the latest and greatest video game system for Christmas.
The film stars Neil Patrick Harris (upcoming “The Matrix Resurrections,” “A Series of Unfortunate Events”) and Winslow Fegley (“Come Play,” “Fast Layne”) as the adult and young Jake, respectively, June Diane Raphael (“Long Shot,” “Grace and Frankie”), with David Cross (“Pitch Perfect 2,” the “Kung Fu Panda” films), and Steve Zahn (“The White Lotus”).
Michael Dowse (“Coffee & Kareem”) directed the film from a screenplay by Kevin Jakubowski, based on his book of the same name. Tim White, Trevor White, Allan Mandelbaum, Jonathan Sadowski and Nick Nantell produced, with Nikki Ramey, Richard Brener, Celia Khong, Kevin Jakubowski and Whitney Brown executive producing.
The film will debut exclusively on HBO Max on Wednesday, November 24th, 2021. Will you be giving it a watch? Let us know with a comment.
Comments 45
How has Neil Patrick Harris fallen this far, To be in a movie like this.
Oh boy……..more 80’s nostalgia pandering…….yaaaaaaaayyyyyyy…..
I never even saw a power glove for real as a kid, no one I knew had one. Plenty of Duck Hunt guns tho.
@Funneefox I enjoyed Stranger Things, but yeah, it's getting a bit played out at this point.
I was in diapers at the time but I still relate to this. Gotta tell my mom about this one but she might have PTSD flashbacks. I remember her saying when I was older that the NES even 3 years after launch was hard to get. I was kinda like that over the SNES. I need to see a 64 bit xmas.
"I love the Power Glove. It's so baaaaaaaad..."
— Angry Video Game Nerd
Looking forward to it…..simply because I lived it!
Ah, the girl says "Nitendo" at 31 seconds. (which is what my NL signature says.😉) It's funny when kids say it like that.
I was skeptical before I clicked, but I actually think this looks pretty awesome!!
Ohhh, NPH! I love him in Series, and How I Met Your Mother!
Have to admit, this looks really good!
Seems like 2021's "A Christmas Story".
A NES instead of a Red Ryder BB gun.
Mix in a little "Home Alone" and you got "8-Bit Christmas"
I will not subscribing to HBO Max, but it has the potential to be mighty entertaining.
If it comes out on DVD in the future, I would pick it up.
@ModdedInkling
The Nerd should definately have a cameo in this!
Retro stuff is cool, but I resent companies missing the point of why this stuff matters to people and instead just cynically mass-market it.
I dunno. Nostalgia was once considered a disorder, and I think about that a lot.
@Magrane @WoomyNNYes @Hikingguy @Jackpaza0508 yup. pretty cool.
To anyone thinking this is just a nostalgia driven made for TV- quality film chucked onto a subscription service for the sole purpose of QUANTITY, you're absolutely correct. Prepare for a lot of 'tech bad, family good' messaging.
@FixMadden22 yah, sucks to be paid a nice fat wage to just have a laugh on set with a bunch of kids. He's doing fine - next up: Matrix 4 $$$$$
We owned a power glove for like 3 days in 1989. My brothers and I quickly realized how useless it actually was at playing most of our games and we traded it in for store credit at our local game shop. Good times!
@OldManHermit
Gray or Orange? Both?
Rampage gameplay at 2 minutes 13 seconds.
So when does this movie take place? If it isn't 1988, then it's not believable. It would be MUCH more relatable to try to get Mario or Zelda 2 in that Holiday season.
(BTW, Nintendo wasn't lying about not having enough copies of either in 1988. The short story was the chips that Mario and Zelda 2 needed were just being discontinued for better versions of said chips. Add to that ALL NES games were made in Japan, along side the massive need for the same chips for Mario 3's Japanese release... Yea, it was real.)
@FixMadden22 Is this a joke? He's known for playing Doogie Howser, a b-tier role on another really seriously awful sitcom, and a cameo in Harold & Kumar. We're not talking about Daniel Day-Lewis here. This is exactly in his wheelhouse.
@GameOtaku I distinctly remember the orange ones yeah.
@CharlieGirl I think people take this topic too seriously. The vast majority of media out there is pretty crappy and plays on cheap emotional button-pushing of one type or another to hook people. But if it makes people happy, it's doing its job, which is to provide escape. Nothing wrong with that. And if nostalgia gives someone relief from the drudgery of life, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Something doesn't have to be comparable to Shakespeare to be valid.
@OldManHermit @GameOtaku Definitely the orange ones. I saw a million of those (including my own) but I don't think I ever saw a single grey one in real life.
Fun! I like these actors and can always get into a new holiday film this time of year, regardless of the actual quality.
Oh, and the Power Glove came out in...checks wikipedia...1989. And the Street Fighter II clone image, right before the kid jump kicks the TV, is a few years before SFII came out. There's lots of 'shoehorning facts to make it work' going on here. However, if they call out NPH's misremembering on these in the film, like how he did with the year the story takes place, then all is forgiven. Otherwise, clueless Hollywood videogame knowledge strikes again.
It'll probably be fun either way, though. NPH rarely disappoints and I find that older 'kid' with the long hair and denim jacket hilarious!
@BAN I'm still kicking myself over getting rid of my Deluxe Set with the grey Zapper and R.O.B. I wish I can go back in time and slap myself every time I got rid of a system before 1994. Of course I'll tell myself, "Snap out of it!", Lol
I personally think this looks good. I guess I'm a sucker for Christmas movies and Nintendo.
I love cheesy Christmas films and I love Nintendo. Hence I love the look of this film! If it’s successful maybe we’ll get a 16 bit Christmas and a 64 bit Christmas film over the next 2 years!
On a side note, I find it weird how I never had a NES growing up and I grew up in the UK not the US, yet I still get the nostalgia feels from this! Maybe it was hearing Joey Tempest belting out the Final Countdown, I definitely remember that as a kid.
@masterLEON I feel your pain. When we got the SNES, my parents gave our sometimes-malfunctioning NES, the zapper, the box it came in, and all its games to some relatives, who probably sold it to buy meth instead of giving it to their kids like they were supposed to. I protested pretty hard but they said I didn't need it and it was broken anyway.
Now that I know that the problem was probably just worn out springs on the pin connector, I wish I would have hidden the thing so they couldn't give it away! Would have been better to take the punishment and keep the system. And all those sweet, sweet games.
And man, to own a grey zapper and an original R.O.B.! That would be so cool. I feel cool just for owning a R.O.B. amiibo, owning the real thing would be another dimension of rad.
@doodlewhizz To anyone thinking this is just a nostalgia driven made for TV- quality film chucked onto a subscription service for the sole purpose of QUANTITY, you're absolutely correct. Prepare for a lot of 'tech bad, family good' messaging.
You've already seen it?
Hopefully we get a Fred Savage cameo.
Looks okay, not great, but I'll give it a watch just because it's about the NES.
@FixMadden22 Neil Patrick Harris has never exactly had a glowing career. Unless you consider Doogie Howser MD to be the pinnacle of television.
This is based on the book of the same name. It was okay at best. I marked out at the random Chris Sabo reference but was definitely written to be made into a TV movie one day. So congrats?
@BAN
I finally found a gray one not too long ago but they are definitely hard to find.
@FixMadden22 Is this sarcasm? This seems like the most mainstream film Neil Patrick Harris has ever been in.
@CharlieGirl This might blow your mind then. There is a theory going around that decades stopped being distinct after the 80s because of corporate capture of government and the consumer culture that ensued. Ms. Marvel was one of the first films that tried to do a 90s nostalgia take and it still seemed like a film whose time period was in the present.
@thinkhector A: If you think corporations “captured” government, then it definitely happened much longer ago than the 1990’s. B: Consumerism has been the main thrust of culture since the industrial revolution. And C: Decades pretty much never feel distinct when we’ve just barely left them behind, but if anything has homogenized popular culture since the 90’s, it’s been the advent of the internet and rapid centralization of web culture.
@thinkhector I absolutely believe that theory.
@nessisonett oh dang you're right. I'm not the biggest fan of tv and movies so maybe i should check what I'm talking about lol.
He DID win the tony award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. So that's what I was thinking of.
@FixMadden22 True, he’s a big Broadway actor! I’ve never seen the Hedwig and the Angry Itch musical live but the movie’s brilliant.
@BAN Looking back, I thought I was pretty bad about keeping things for future value, giving away my stuff all willy-nilly. But parents can be so clueless! I feel your pain. My mom gave away my- erm, my cousin's Transformers that I happily took off his hands because my aunt was going to get rid of them (the irony).
R.O.B. was kind of kinda cool when we first used it. Reading the command flashes from the TV screen, watching it come to life it whirred as it's whole torso twisted to grab the discs/tops, putting it in the module that made them spin, taking them out and putting it on the appropriate levers to push the buttons on controller 2. It was cool, that is until I figured out that I could just cut out the middle man and press the buttons myslef! Back in the box R.O.B. went after only a couple days. It hurts a bit now that I basically gave away a barely used R.O.B...ugh.
@BAN It's not my opinion that the United States government is under corporate capture. There was a multi-year Harvard study that looked at laws passed by Congress. If a law was supported by a majority of rich people the law passed 85% of the time. If a law was supported by the majority of people making under $50,000 a year, it passed less than 10 percent of the time. The Harvard Study concluded that the United States less resembled a functional Republc but looked exactly like an Oligarchy in practice.
The book "Evil Geniuses," released in 2021 so very recent, details the ways the government was captured by business groups and leaders. It doesn't mention the Harvard Study but the plan to turn the United States into an Oligarchy wasnt actually a secret. It was a plan hatched right in the open. And everyone missed it anyways.
Well I think this looks fun anyway… so whatever 🤷♂️. Hopefully comes to Australia in some way.
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