Light Cycle

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Light cycles are fictional vehicles designed by Syd Mead for the simulated world of the Tron universe. These futuristic two-wheeled vehicles resemble motorcycles and create walls of colored light.

The vehicles were primarily used in a competition between humanoid computer programs, similar to an old computer game sometimes known as "Surround" or "Dominos". The players are in constant motion on a playfield, creating a wall behind them as they move. If a player hits a wall either by accident or by having no more room to move, he is out of the game, and the last player wins.

In the illustration, two players are racing head to head close to each other. If the blue player turns left, the yellow player will risk hitting the newly created wall. However, it is likely that the yellow player will not hit the wall, but the blue vehicle itself, leading to the destruction of both players.

After the 1982 arcade game adaptation of the film, Tron, many versions of this game have been created for personal computers, among them Armagetron, GLTron, and BeamWars (voted one of the best Macintosh shareware games of all time in a 1993 MacUser poll). The video games Tron 2.0 and Kingdom Hearts II also feature Light Cycle games, albeit with their own twists.

A light cycle toy, in red and yellow versions, was produced by TOMY as part of the merchandising for the Tron film, along with action figures scaled to fit inside the toy cycles. Bootleg versions of TOMY's design were produced by other toy manufacturers that came in a wide variety of colors, including blue and silver, but were noticeably smaller than the TOMY-produced toy, too small in fact to accommodate one of the TOMY action figures.

[edit] Other uses

• Light cycles were also featured in the TV show The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest as a portion of a virtual set of computer games.
• The animated TV show Family Guy also had a spoof using Light Cycles in one of its episodes, "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea", where Peter Griffin is in the green Light Cycle, and the red Light Cycle turns out to be an old high school friend.
• In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora used a Light Cycle in the Tron level known as Space Paranoids.
• A 2006 Honda Civic Si commercial pays homage to the Light Cycles with its own race of three Civic Sis on a Tron-like board.
• Futurama also pays respect to the light cycle in the episode "Fear of a Bot Planet" in season 1 during a blernsball game very near the beginning.

[edit] See also

• Snake
• Achtung, die Kurve!
• Armagetron Advanced, The most popular, Modern and open-source attempt to recreate The Light Cycle game. Features a Multiplayer/online mode which allows to play on the internet.
• GLtron, Another 3D-Accelerated port of the Classic arcade game.