Another Bite of the Arcade Apple

This is what some solid development time can provide. When Bally Midway picked up the Tron license so they could develop an arcade game their programmers’ plan was to make a mini-game collection inspired by the movie with five games inside inspired by the film. When the Tron arcade game was finally released only four games made the cut. A fifth one, based on the disc battle sequences from the film, was cut due to time. It didn’t seem to hurt the original arcade title, as that went on to become a huge success (even if I didn’t much like it years later), and that gave Bally Midway the opportunity to produce a sequel of sorts.

Since that fifth game hadn’t made the original cut, the programmers decided to take that game, flesh it out, and make it into its own experience. Thus, Discs of Tron was born and, yes, it is a disc-based combat game. Frankly, it benefited greatly from the extra development time and room to breathe. Instead of having to share time with four other games, this title could make the disc-sequence its own experience, fully fleshed out and made into a real game. There’s no distractions, no diversions, just pure, thrilling disc combat set within the world of Tron, and it’s great.

The game starts things off slow at first. Your character, the eponymous Tron, is set on a circular platform opposite a red foe on their own platform (the details of game say this is the villain, Sark, but nothing within the game itself tells you that). You and Sark are each armed with three discs that you can throw at each other, with the goal of hitting the other person and knocking them off their platform. Do this twice and it’s on to the next round where things get a little more complex, and then more complex, and so on.

After the first round, the player and opponents are given two platforms, and then three. Certain rounds have walls that impede direct shots of the disc. Later, the platforms are given pistons so they can move up and down. And then eventually the platforms become activated so that they can disappear if the player doesn’t touch them regularly. This creates a frenetic, action-packed experience where you’re constantly having to move, dodge, hit pads, aim, and move again, all while discs are flying and the action never lets up.

The action of the game is frenetic, and I think it’s the best part of the experience. Using the complex control scheme (which consisted of a joystick with a thumb button for the right hand and then a couple of buttons alongside a rotary dial that could be twisted as well as pushed and pulled on with the left hand) the player could move, aim, and shoot all at the same time. It’s a lot to keep up with, and the bar for progress does begin to feel pretty high, but at the same time if you could find your zone and get into the flow of the movement, it did all feel very rewarding.

The play experience reminded me in some ways of Robotron 2084 since you have to move with one hand and aim with the other. The experience isn’t a one-to-one comparison as this game is presented in a faux 3D space with action-platforming elements while Robotron 2084 was shown in a top-down perspective shooting arena, but both games require similar skills to succeed. You have to be able to track yourself, your enemy, where you’re aiming, and what they’ve thrown at you all at the same time if you want to get anywhere in the game. It’s not easy, but it can be very fun.

I really appreciated the variety of the game and how it slowly ramped up its difficulty. Going from one to two to three platforms at the start lets you get used to the whole expanse of the arena. Introducing new hazards and new twists on the platforms also made it feel like the game had a lot of variety to it. You were never sure how many platforms you’d get, how much room you’d have to maneuver, or what might get in your way from one round to the next. That meant constantly recalibrating your brain to be mindful of whatever twist was active next… at least for a little while.

One slight against the game is that after you’ve played through the twelve main rounds of the game, Discs of Tron loops back around to round six’s layout and repeats over and over. By that point you’ll only have three-platform stages that sometimes rise and fall and sometimes light up (and disappear). The one- and two-platform stages are removed but, even worse, so are the rounds that include barriers. You get those for two rounds early on and then they aren’t included in the loops after. Considering they’re an interesting and dynamic twist on stage layouts I was seriously disappointed that they didn’t continue into later rounds, especially once the loops begin.

And I will admit that the later loops get maybe a little too frenetic. While you are limited to just your three discs (and a limited-use barrier you can use seven times), the foe can throw the occasional homing disc back at you. This can’t be deflected, it can’t be destroyed, so you have to dodge around and wait for it to explode on its own, far away from you. As the stages progress the foe throws more and more of these until it’s pretty obvious that’s all they’re going to do and you’ll eventually mess up as three of these things, with discs whirling around and zooming at you, will end your life pretty quickly.

Now, sure, the developers didn’t want you spending hours and hours on this machine as the goal was to get you to pump quarters into it. But at the same time, the game is already difficult to keep up with. Making it outright unfair in the late game is fairly annoying, if not completely rude. Instead of simply letting the foe throw homing missiles all day, more twists to the platforms and more variety to make you think would have been a better option. Changing the gameplay to make the player struggle to keep up with the twists and turns feels like a far fairer way to kill a player without resorting to letting the foe “cheat” until you die.

Still, these are late game problems and it only really becomes an issue on your third or fourth loop. Most players wouldn’t get that far, dying much earlier. But that’s fine, because they would have had their fun and gotten their quarter’s worth of entertainment. Because Discs of Tron is entertaining. It’s a fun, focused action game that comes in to do one job and does it really well. A single game that does one thing really well is far better than a game that does four things only decently. Discs of Tron is better than the Tron arcade game in every way and, given a choice, this is the one I’d play every time.