[Lagged2Death]

I didn't know quite what the headline meant - there was at least one TRON arcade game - as in, a coin-operated game - that had a totally different concept and which is now mostly deservedly forgotten:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/arcade/discs-of-tron

There was also a TRON arcade game that was a mismash of mini-games, one of which was the light-cycles:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10204

I see from Google that indeed many, many people refer to this "use moving wall to make the other guy crash" style of game as "TRON" now, but TRON actually just put a brand name on a game genre that had been around:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_%28video_game%29

A home game circa 1977, years before TRON:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/surround

"Snake" to TRON could actually be one of the earliest, if not the earliest, example of a big-budget studio movie adapting a video game concept. Doing so surprisingly directly.

Now, of course, half the movies that come out of Hollywood seem to have action bits that are vaguely video-game inspired.

[kreldjarn]

Thanks for the historical input!

I actually thought Snake and TRON were two distinct games with Snake being a 'player against environment'-game and TRON being 'player against an NPC'-game.

[sunspeck]

The TRON/Lightcycle genre is at its very best as a PvP(xN) game. Haven't logged in for years, but there used to be dozens of very active servers running Armagetron Advanced, and it looks like it's still going:

http://armagetronad.org/index.php

A very fun, fast paced, social, arcade-like gaming environment for someone not invested enough in gaming to delve into the likes of WoW or similar.

[endgame]

They had a tournament of this at PAX AUS this year. It's not dead.

[joezydeco]

Discs of TRON was originally intended to be a fifth mode in the original Bally/Midway TRON, but was left out because of a couple of reasons. Some say there wasn't time to finish the mode, some thought the mode was fun enough to break out into it's own title.

And it does not deserve to be forgotten. Playing Discs of TRON in the "environmental" cabinet with stereo sound is a nice experience.

Anyway, here's some fun background on the TRON game, including some original design documents:

http://arcarc.xmission.com/Pictures/Tron%20Lost%20Documents/...

[goatforce5]

An arcade nearish to me had the environmental cabinet, complete with it's customer controller hardware.

This particular machine would give you small electric shocks from the controller which I thought was part of the game, but I now realize that was probably an electrical fault with that particular machine.

[paulrademacher]

> there was at least one TRON arcade game... that had a totally different concept and which is now mostly deservedly forgotten

I can barely express how amazing and influential Discs of Tron was to me as a kid. The concept, the animation, the black light... totally captured my imagination right when I was first learning BASIC on TRS-Model III and C64.

[codingdave]

Why are you dissing Discs of Tron? In the environmental cabinet, it was one of my favorite games of all time. The locations that still have one running are cherished to me and the other fans.