It was, we were told, a revolution in the art of movie-making. It ranked right up there with the introduction of sound, or color, or even 3-D. It was the first movie animated by a computer.
Tron got enough free publicity before its release to make most of us drool in anticipation. And the publicity worked – for a few days. Millions of people went to see the movie the week it opened.
But after the first few days, ticket sales began to drop-and drop, and drop. By late summer, Tron had pulled in only about $30 million. That meant the Disney Corporation stood to lose millions on a movie that was supposed to revolutionize the industry.
What happened? Well, publicity can often fill theaters for a few days after a movie opens. After that, though, word-of-mouth begins to get around. If the word-of-mouth isn't good, the movie is going to die.
And the word-of-mouth about Tron was anything but good.
"Beautiful to look at," people said. “Visually exciting. Incredible graphics."
But when you asked what the movie was about, you could see the enthusiasm begin to fade. Tron may have been a revolutionary movie, but it wasn’t about much at all.
It had plastic characters and a shoot-em-up story that we've seen hundreds of times – in Westerns, in spy stories, and in space adventures. The Disney people did a slam-bang job on the graphics, but they forgot something very important: most of us expect a movie to tell a story about people we care about.
The sad tale of Tron, however, has at least one happy note to it. The movie-makers at Disney may have fallen down on the job. But the publicity people came through in a way that may have long-lasting effects. Not on movies, however, but on video games.
One of the gimmicks they came up with to publicize the movie was an arcade game of the same name. And even if the game TRON isn't exactly revolutionary, it does move screen games a notch or two ahead of where they were before it arrived.
THE GAME
As was true in the movie, TRON involves you in the ultimate video game fantasy. You are Tron, and your mission is to defeat the MCP-the Master Control Program. The intention of the MCP is to control all computer programs and bend them to its will.
Some programs have resisted, in the hope of continuing to serve humanity. They have all fallen before the MCP‘s onslaught, and now only Tron remains. The MCP is determined to defeat you, and will challenge you with four deadly contests.
If you win, the MCP is defeated, and its plan for world domination is ended. If you lose, there will be no stopping the MCP, for the last champion of freedom will have been destroyed.
The challenge begins as a four-color maze, in the middle of which Tron appears as a small dot. By moving the dot to the top, bottom, left, or right, you select one of the four areas of combat. Once you enter an arena, Tron appears either as a finely detailed human figure or as the vehicle in which he will wage combat.
THE MCP CONE is a spinning cylinder of multi-colored light that moves relentlessly down toward Tron. If the cylinder touches him, he is disintegrated. His defense is to continually fire his power disc at the underside of the cone, destroying pieces of the cone at point of impact. When a large enough opening exists, Tron can move up into the cone, thus defeating the MCP in the first battle.
THE INPUT/OUTPUT TOWER is the connection between the outside world and the world of the Users-human creators of this computer universe. The MCP guards this tower with an army of deadly grid-spiders. Their mission is to prevent Tron from entering the tower and contacting his leaders. Tron has only five seconds to destroy the spiders and enter the tower.
LIGHT CYCLES make up the third challenge from the MCP. Tron pilots his cycle along predetermined lines of a screen-size grid. He has to avoid the MCP's cycle, which is traveling along the same grid.
The light trails left in the wake of the cycles become solid walls, as threatening as the walls of the grid. If Tron can keep riding, within the grid, long enough to force the MCP cycle to crash into a wall or a light trail, the MCP is defeated once again.
THE TANK MAZE puts Tron into another vehicle, a tank facing a similar machine piloted by the MCP. The MCP has a clear advantage in this challenge. Tron needs three direct hits to destroy the MCP tank. But only one blast from the MCP will disintegrate Tron.
And there you have it-four very distinct, and very exciting, challenges making up one game. In addition to that, TRON is graphically one of the most appealing games you'll ever see.
TRON represents a real breakthrough, a giant step ahead in realizing the possibilities of arcade games. Just seeing the game can make you forgive the Disney people for bombing with the movie.
Actually playing it, however, could make you forget that there ever was a movie at all. TRON is one spinoff that completely dwarfs its inspiration.
