Discs of Tron

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Discs of Tron

Developer(s)	Midway Games and Bally
Publisher(s)	Midway Games and Bally
Designer(s)	Robert Dinnerman
Release date(s)	1983
Genre(s)	Retro/Arcade
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input	Push-down-pull-up Rotary dial, 8-way joystick w/ trigger and thumb button
Arcade cabinet	Upright, environmental and second style of upright made from the front half of unsold environmental cabinets.
Arcade display	Raster, standard resolution (512 by 480) Colors 16, horizontal

Discs of Tron is the second arcade game based on 1982 Disney movie Tron.

[edit] Description

While the first (simply called Tron) has several games (gridbugs, lightcycles, entering the MCP cone and tanks), Discs of Tron is inspired by the short sequence in the movie where the character Flynn beats another trapped program and eventually "derezzes" him, and when Tron is introduced, beating four "computer players" very early in the movie, which seemed to inspire the home game, similar in concept yet different in gameplay, Tron Deadly Discs (for Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Colecovision), where the player is trapped in a square arena, throwing a boomerang-like disc against enemies coming from opening gaps in the wall.

While in the movie both players were standing on top of a platform made of 5 concentric circles that would disappear if an energy pellet, thrown from an arm extension similar to a Basque Pelota/Jai Alai against a target between both platforms, touched it, DoT used several platforms, and the player had to beat Sark by throwing him discs and eventually derezz him or push him outside the platforms. While the player, along the discs, can use a deflector, Sark has two more weapons: a chaser and a super chaser, that can only be destroyed with the discs.

[edit] Legacy

This game was released just before the video game crash of 1983, so there are no major ports or sequels outside of the standard releases for the Atari 2600 and the Colecovision. At the time of its original release, a version was released for the Commodore 64. Recently, a version called Tron 2.0 Killer App has been released for the Game Boy Advance.