While the film was a commercial failure, the arcade video games based on it proved to be a tremendous hit and actually out-grossed the film.
The film was disqualified from receiving an Academy Award nomination for special effects, because the Academy felt at the time that using computer generated effects was "cheating".
The state-of-the-art computer used for the film's key special effects had only 2MB of memory and 330MB of storage.
To inspire the actors, arcade games were placed on the production sets and could be played during downtime. Jeff Bridges apparently was the most adept at the games and found it hard to tear himself away from a game to shoot a scene.
Many Disney animators refused to work on this movie because they feared that computers would put them out of business. In fact, 22 years later Disney closed its hand-drawn animation studio in favor of CGI animation. Hand-drawn animation was ultimately resumed at Disney at the behest of new creative director John Lasseter, also head of Pixar- ironically a computer animation company.
Steven Lisberger: man dressed in black at Flynn's arcade, coming from center front and walking to the right, and whose face is visible when he releases a blue tee clad blonde employee he grabbed as they crossed (around 17'32).