There's no mistaking it: The Wizard was a commercial.

Roger Ebert said as much in his review of the film. The Angry Video Game Nerd, as he is wont to do, tore it a new one. It's a movie forever to be defined by its worst moments, like the introduction of the Power Glove and the three days that the "heroes" of the film spend on the phone with the Nintendo help line, which, if memory serves, would have cost about $50,000.
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It's 100 minutes of pure propaganda, complete with some of the most improbable twists and turns ever put to film. You don't have to pick holes in it - they're already there in plain sight, completely apparent to anyone who's watching. And yet, if you were 10 years old, this flawed, overwrought big-screen advertisement was pure movie magic.