I held off posting about this in the hope that the downtime would be short (and thus not worth mentioning), but Boxhat is still down after about 48 hours. Bigred (the site owner) stated that he was hoping to have it back up this morning, but obviously it's not.

Bigred is working on the site problem, and it might come back as early as today. But I think these problems will continue until he permanently changes hosts. His current host has become completely unreliable. However, they're not making to easy for him to switch (being unresponsive to his requests).

March 28th UPDATE: Boxhat is back online. But some recent message posts have unfortunately been lost, due to restoration from a backup.

Just when you think it's a slow news period and there's nothing much to talk about, along comes something "cool" out of the blue.

As mentioned on TRON-Sector, Moriarty and Harry from Ain't-It-Cool News are doing a series of articles reminiscing about several films from 1982, one of them including TRON.

My favorite quote from the article is this . . .

HARRY: I think it is amazing that Steve Lisburger (sic) hasn’t had Disney begging him to make a sequel to this film.

Even Harry is wondering the same damn thing we are. Twenty-fifth Anniversary, anyone? Hello? Anybody home at Disney?

Here are some news "bits", to tide things over during another slow news period. (Get it? Bits? Oh, never mind.)




TRON: The Ghost In the Machine co-author Landry Walker has posted another artwork preview from the upcoming Issue #4 (due out next month). The Light Cycles look pretty nice. Can't wait to see what they look like when they're done, in full color.

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Ever since Buena Vista Games (BVG) announced they were changing their name to Disney Interactive Studios (DIS or simply DI), I was wondering how they were going to handle their "mature" titles. Based on their past history, it didn't seem likely they would publish any potentially "controversial" titles under the Disney name. (Controversial because they contained slightly more mature themes, or depicted mild violence. Gasp.)

Well, now we have the answer. Mature titles will be released, either under the "Touchstone" name (you remember Touchstone Films, don't you?) or under the "ABC" name. Somehow, I just don't see how those names fit for video game releases. They're way too strongly associated with film and television entertainment. But I guess rather than invent new names, Disney chose to use existing ones.

Can you picture someone saying something like "Did you pick up the latest Touchstone game that came out?" or "Did you check out that new game from ABC?". They both sound pretty weird to me.

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On a disappointing note: I discovered that the Abyss Single Player mission by Johnny LaRue I mentioned in a previous article, has been postponed indefinitely. Here's hoping it does get finished, some day.

October 31st, 2012 UPDATE: This article is out of date. User Error has been available for quite some time.

Another one of several projects by LDSO has just been recently revealed, User Error 2 (UE2). This Single Player expansion mod is being worked on by Mor.Evil-1, win3k, and Zook_One.

This expansion picks up where the original User Error (UE1) expansion by Meatsack left off, with Jeremy Powers continuing his adventures.

Here are some sample screenshots of the mod-in-progress.

LDSO member Xistence's new site is temporarily down. Until it returns, I thought I would present all the screenshots he's released for The Digital Messiah (TDM), his Single Player total conversion for TRON 2.0.

Disclaimer: Some of these concepts may be out of date, and may no longer appear in TDM.

Enjoy.

The site Paperback Reader has interviewed Landry Walker and Eric Jones, co-authors of the TRON: The Ghost in the Machine comic.

The interview features some new insights into the authors themselves, as well as a couple of tidbits of new information. The following are the highlights of the interview.

Are there any other projects you two are working on and do they involve more TRON?

LANDRY: Yes, we're working on additional TRON material besides this one series.

This seems to confirm that there are definitely more TRON comic projects coming down the pipeline.

How far in the future have you planned issues for TRON?

LANDRY: Thirteen issues in my mind. Maybe only seven. Depends on where we decide to call it a day.

Landry mentioned the possibility of up to thirteen issues before, but I personally didn't think he would still be considering it. A run that long, would be pretty amazing.

Thanks to troff for this news tip. It looks like Reebok may have been "inspired" by the Adidas TRON shoes that are already on the market. They'll be releasing a pair of shoes that glow in the dark, with a TRON-like circuit pattern. These aren't official TRON merchandise, but are in the same vein and I thought were worth mentioning.

Click here for more pictures and information.

The site Toon Zone has interviewed SLG Publishing owner Dan Vado, where he talks some more about about the deal with Disney for their Disney-based comics (which includes TRON: The Ghost In the Machine).

There isn't much new, that hadn't already been said in his recent blog entries; as mentioned in a previous article. However, there's one new tidbit that I think stood out.

Vado also told us that he wants to renew the licensing contract in 2008, but added that he really has no idea how Disney feels about the comics initiative, and couldn’t rule out an amicable parting of the ways as a possible future. At this time, he said he had no solid ideas on what would come next.