I am trying to remember a film that featured a computer adventure game and my google-fu is letting me down.
The film is from (I think) the 80s and is a fantasy type adventure with a young boy as the main protagonist. At the beginning of the film he is playing an adventure game on a home computer and he cannot get past a wizard/dragon/troll (or some such). The game uses a text parser and he tries various options to no avail. He then goes off and has the main ‘real life’ adventure and at the end of the film he uses his experiences to work out what he has to do in the game and defeats the wizard/dragon/troll.
I’m sure this is a well known film and I’ve seen it at least twice, but my brain won’t release the info.
ETA: Just realised this is probably better suited to Café Society as I’m after the film name not so much the game.
For what it’s worth he revisits the game while still an adult and it helps him decide he needs to go back to being a kid again. I also believe I have read online it is a real game.
There’s this old thread (“what was the computer game that Tom Hanks was playing in ‘Big?’”) in which GIGObuster concludes that it was a fictional game (and I agree).
There is conjecture that the game may have been “Wizard and the Princess,” a precursor to the King’s Quest series, or possibly “Colossal Cave Adventure,” however the graphics from those games does not seem to match up with screenshots of the game from the movie, nor does the specific game scenario shown in the movie appear in either game.