Ahhhh Jeff Bridges - too few Jeff Bridges films are converted into games. Thank goodness for Tron, probably the only game based on a Jeff Bridges film. You don’t get to play as Jeff, mind…..
Originally released to coincide with the Disney film in 1982, the very year I was born. Tron was awarded the prestigious Electronic Games Magazine ‘Coin operated game of the year’, and now 26 years later, Tron receives another award; The inaugural ‘wyndorf666 award for outstanding achievement in the art of being the worst game of all time’. Yes folks, Tron is horrible.
It blows my mind to think someone somewhere , sitting in an office, stroking their chin, actually thought it was a good idea to bring Tron, out of 1982 and into the year 2008. Whoever you are, hang your head in shame and ask the next person who comes into the room - to slap you across the face. You’re going to bed with no dinner tonight, sonny.
To try and get some kind of substance that isn’t abuse into this review, here’s the basic concept of Tron - the video game. You play as Tron - a security program……I know, it’s genius stuff. The in’s and out’s of the plot aren’t really important, what you’ve got here are 4 mini games that repeat themselves 12 times getting harder as you go. I/O tower sees you attempting to manoeuvre Tron into a flashing circle guarded by mechanical spiders - you’ll die if you touch said spiders, but luckily you have your faithful discs which can be lobbed at the spiders to clear a safe path. Battle Tanks is viewed top down with the simple objective of destroying all the other tanks. MCP cone gives you the task of shooting a rapidly respawning wall of colour, just to give you enough room to pass through it cleanly and into a pyramid. Rounding off this soul destroying selection of games is Light Cycles, which is a bit like Snake, only as well as avoiding the walls, you have another light cycle looking to take you down. Your objective is to destroy it first. That’s pretty much it.
As mentioned, the game gets harder as you proceed, and if you can beat the tedium of level 1, you’ll no doubt be suicidal by level 3. Indeed, it’s not easy - in fact it’s quite challenging, but because it’s just so bad, you won’t care to train yourself up to be any good at it.
I can only assume some view Tron as ‘so bad it’s good’….let me tell you, that is simply not the case. Tron is so bad it’s nasty. For years Superman 64 has suffered from the stigma of being the worst game of all time, this just isn’t fair, Tron is far more deserving of such a bad recognition.
This Tron review is short, and bitter. Sorry about that, folks. I’m off now to clean myself - but before I go, I would heartedly recommend EVERYONE download the free trial of Tron, it somehow has the magic effect of making games you’ve previously overlooked as ‘rubbish’, very temping indeed.
