Another Warrior Has Entered the Mesa

July 26th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Maybe you’ve heard the news by now, if not, swing by Giz and check out the horrible awful bootleg for the teaser of TR2N that was shown at nerd prom earlier this week.

Normally, I’d be nonplussed about a TRON sequel (the TRON 2.0 game was a decent enough FPS, but a horrible shadow of what should have been a true TRON sequel), but this pushes all the right buttons: Decent enough 3D (at least from what I can see in the bootleg), Jeff Bridges returning in presumably his original role, and Light Cycles. Oh, and the combat frisbee things. Not to mention the whole idea of living inside of a video-game/computer system. But mostly I care about the Light Cycles.

As you’re already aware of, the original Light Cycles were very video-gamey. They only turned at right angles while played in a big square arena (the grid). This was a pretty novel concept at the time, and was probably one of the reasons the movie was so successful. It turned a battle of motorcycles into a game of multiplayer snake. Force your enemy to drive into your light trail by eliminating choices through tactical wall placement.

The new light cycles are…analog. I’m not sure how I feel about this. In one sense, there’s better action to be had here. They now lean when they turn (even on the grid), and turn on arcs (instead of only at perfect right angles). The user can even turn his trail on and off while on the grid. The grid is even much more complex, with multiple levels, ramps, hallways, etc. It’s no longer just a giant square.

While all of this means a much more “grounded” cinematic action sequence, I wonder if the reason why they decided to make these choices was for the cinematic experience, or if it’s because our gaming media has evolved so much further from the original TRON era. After all, TRON was based on what was seen as cutting edge for the day. While the purists might claim that a Light Cycle that doesn’t turn at right angles isn’t a true Light Cycle, it’s hard to justify keeping something that was based on such a comparatively primitive era of gaming. Our multiplayer maps are much more complex than the Combat arena era, and our games now support vehicle physics and dynamics that rival real world performance of those same vehicles.

So I guess if we want an accurate depiction of what it would be like to live inside of a current gen video-game, we’ll have to live with current gen physcis on our Light Cycles, no? I guess the only question now is who is going to replace the Master Control Program?

Oh please oh please oh please let it be GLaDOS.

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Tags: general

3 responses so far ↓

1 bunnyhero // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:27 pm

the original tron light cycle game wasn’t a novel concept at all. this type of game had existed on computers for years; e.g. surround for the atari 2600: http://www.consoleclassix.com/atari-2600/surround.html
2 spitfire // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:33 pm

I think we could certainly argue that more people saw TRON in the theater than purchased or played Surround

So it was certainly novel to the people who saw it in the movie for the first time who were unfamiliar with the snake game concept.
3 kirkjerk // Jul 31, 2008 at 9:08 am

The tanks were so much cooler than the cycles…

Also, I used to think that the new Beetle looked like a 4 seater version of those cycles…