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 >> TRON <<

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For those of us who grew up raging against the MCP...


The Tron arcade game is composed of 4 individual games...
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Grid Bugs
| Probably the easiest game in Tron. The object of this game is to move Tron into the "flashing circle" which is the I/O Tower in the center of the screen before time runs out. The gridbugs (which appear in the movie for a whopping 3 seconds) multiply like mad, and if Tron touches them, he dies. But the user can move Tron's arm with the spinner to aim, and fire disks at the bugs to kill them. If Tron makes it into the I/O Tower, he is beamed up, and the game is completed. |
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Light Cycles
| Probably the most popular game in Tron. This is the game that is usually what is meant when people refer to a "Tron-like" game. The object is to surround the computer's yellow cycles with a trail of light emitted from the back of Tron's blue cycle. If Tron's cycle runs into the side walls, or light from any of the other cycles, he dies. |
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MCP Cone
| This game is similar to the Atari game "Breakout". The object is to clear a hole in the protective blocks in front of the MCP cone so that Tron can make it into the cone itself... Unlike the movie where Flynn jumped into the cone, and Tron just shot his disk in. Anyway. To make matters worse, the cone can have up to 6 levels of protective blocks, which rotate either clockwise, or counter-clockwise, AND the whole shebang moves down, towards Tron... |
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Tanks
| The tanks game in Tron is similar to the Atari 2600/VCS game "Combat", but not really. You have to move Tron's red tank through a maze and shoot the computer's blue tanks or red recognizers. There are anywhere between 1 and 5 enemy tanks to destroy. Enemy tanks require only one shot to take out Tron's tank, while Tron must fire three shots to take out one of the computer's tanks. |


The game is organized into 12 levels, easiest to hardest, as follows:
Level
Name
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Level
Name
|
Level
Name
01
RPG
05
SNOBOL
09
ASSEMBLY
02
COBOL
06
PL1
10
OS
03
BASIC
07
PASCAL
11
JCL
04
FORTRAN
08
ALGOL
12
USER

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My Game...

_____My history with the Tron arcade game is a long one. I cannot remember when I first played it. All I remember is always wanting to. I grew up in Southern California and whenever I went to Disneyland with friends or family, my first stop was the arcade in Tomorrowland to play Tron. When I was living in Costa Mesa, I regularly visited a great punk record store called Noise Noise Noise. They had a Tron game and the store made more money off my Tron playing than my music purchases. If you've looked at my record collection you know what kind of money I must have dropped in their game. Then came the lean years in Atlanta where nobody in town had a game I could play. And so... I started looking on eBay and eventually bought one that was in fairly good condition.
_____Shortly thereafter, I came in contact with a guy in Tennessee that restored vintage arcade games and I brought it up to him for some work. He did a great job. The body was sanded, refinished and new decals were put on. I replaced the glass, all the light bulbs and speakers plus a free game button was installed. The power supply was replaced and the monitor capped and tuned. All in all, it's almost a completely new game and it looks like a million dollars. Few things are sweeter than playing Tron whenever you want to.

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Much respect to Scott "Jerry" Lawrence for some of the information and images used here.

Too much red, yellow and blue?
Too bad!


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