The Game Grid: History of the Offical TRON Games

With the release of the new movie TRON: Legacy which is a sequel to the movie TRON there has been lots of interest in all things TRON. There have been many video games based on the TRON Franchise both in the past and even now in the present. There have even been many unofficial TRON games as well. We will only be looking at the officially released TRON games though in this article.

The first TRON game was for the arcade and featured four game options. Originally Discs of TRON was going to be in the original cabinet but there was not enough time and so it got its own game soon after. The first TRON arcade game was very popular and made more then the film did when it was first released. The four games were the MPC, I/O Tower, Battle Tanks, and Light Cycles. The Battler Tanks and Light Cycles were most peoples favorite games. The Battle Tanks were like Pac-Man but you got to shoot at the enemy which was nice though it played slower then Pac-Man. The Light Cycles game would be reproduced over and over from flash games to the iPhone.

The next game to come out for the arcade was the Discs of TRON game. This was a very popular game. This is one of a few games to use a spinner and is probably the only game with a spinner that also acts as a button which means if you get a MAME arcade from somewhere like Dream Arcades you will have to add a special spinner which is pricey and only works for this one game.

The Intellevision and Atari 2600 and similar systems of the time had a few TRON games made for the system. TRON: Deadly Discs never ends but keeps looping and all you can do is get a high score but is often considered the best of the home console TRON games of the era. Solar Sailer and Maze A TRON are often considered to difficult to play and you need to have a manual and read it to understand how to play those games. Adventures of TRON was only for the Atari 2600 but also one of the more popular home console games and was an early platformer.

It would be about 20 years from the the last TRON game that we would see from TRON again. Tron 2.0 was fairly popular and well received and brought with it rumors of a new movie which had been circulating for some time since the mid 90's. TRON 2.0 tried to get in on the FPS popularity of the time. Besides the shooting levels there were some light cycle levels as well.

TRON: Evolution is an action game which has received mixed reviews. Fans will enjoy it but non fans may find the gameplay repetitive. TRON Evolution: Battle Grids is not as good in terms of visuals and computing power since it is for the Wii and DS but it might is more in line with the classic Tron games and the games in the original movie. If you like Light Cycles then TRON Evolution: Battle Grids is the best game for you.

It is likely that there will be more TRON games in the future since a TV cartoon will be airing this year and they are already working on a third TRON movie. Of course Tron is also in other games and there are many unofficial Tron games out there too. The best TRON games though are still probably the old games the Wii does the best at bringing us the same kind of games and gameplay hopefully newer games will focus more on the games that are played in the TRON world.