As I was visiting some of my favorite web sites today, you can imagine how unexpectedly — and pleasantly — surprised I was when I discovered that Rock, Paper, Shotgun had an article remembering TRON 2.0.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a site that specializes in news and discussion about PC games. That they'd remember, or even mention, TRON 2.0 in a million years is quite heartwarming to yours truly. The author of the article, Jim Rossignol, basically republished a review he did of the game for PC Gamer UK, back when the game was released. But he tweaked and updated it, to reflect upon the game today.

The review is positive, overall. He cites many of the weaknesses of the game, which I admit are there and should be taken into consideration. But he also rightly points out that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, to borrow an old cliché.

If you haven't seen or tried the game, and would like to: there is a demo of TRON 2.0 that has a couple of Single Player and Multiplayer levels from the full game. It works on just about all versions of Windows: 98, Me, 2000, XP, and even Vista. Naturally, the full game also works on all these versions of Windows. But the Multiplayer component of the demo isn't compatible with the full version of the game, unfortunately.

According to Surfer Girl, the upcoming TRON sequel is apparently going to be released in     3-D. As in, the "you will be wearing 3-D glasses and the film will leap off the screen", type of 3-D. This news is also suggesting that TRON will likely be re-released in theaters, shortly before the new film premieres.

Who is Surfer Girl? That's a good question. Apparently, nobody really knows. But "she" seems to be an insider in the entertainment business. She's posted many rumors about films and video games, and the majority of them have come true.

As crazy and far-fetched as this news may sound, there may be a grain of truth to it. It's a known fact that George Lucas wants to re-release the Star Wars films in 3-D, theatrically. The technique for making 3-D films has improved dramatically, in the last decade or so. Lucas apparently had a short test segment done for Star Wars a while back, and people were blown away by it.

Also, Disney has announced plans to theatrically re-release Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3-D right before Toy Story 3 premieres (also in 3-D).

I personally think that redoing films in 3-D is gimmicky, and serves solely as a cash grab by film studios. It's true that certain films like Star Wars may benefit from it. But Toy Story? Come on. And I'm not really sure that a TRON sequel would benefit from this treatment, either.

No matter what anyone may think of this news, what's most interesting about it is that it implies the TRON sequel is a definite go. So this should mean we'll be hearing a "greenlighted" announcement soon?

Thanks to Steve for the news!

The Starz Entertainment network has been airing the pilot episode — for a potential new series — called Hollywood Goes Gaming, in repeats for the last couple of months.

Among the people interviewed, is TRON Director Steven Lisberger. In fact, he is apparently the first person interviewed in the episode.

I have not watched the show, because I don't receive Starz. But according to a couple of reviews here and here, Lisberger speaks at length about how well the TRON arcade games did compared to the film. And about how they pioneered the idea of the video game tie-in to go with a Hollywood motion picture.

He also discusses, again, how TRON was denied an Academy award for special effects because — at the time — the Academy members felt he had "cheated" by using computer graphics. Which, as one of the reviews I linked to states, is a laughable notion today.

If you receive Starz in your channel line-up, you can catch this hour-long episode again on Thursday January 24th, 2008 starting at 10:50 PM Eastern Time on Starz Edge (East).

Thanks to tron_fanfare for the tip.

The release of TRON Arcade and Discs of TRON on the Xbox 360's Live Arcade is finally imminent, after an extremely long delay and a lot of guessing games about release dates. But it's not entirely clear to me if Discs of TRON is being released together with TRON Arcade at the same time. It would appear the releases are separate, going by the post on Major Nelson's site.

If this is correct, then each should cost 400 Microsoft Points when released. Which comes to about $10 U.S. for both.

Why the games have been delayed for so long — after their original announcement last year in May — is an open question. In this forum post, a representative from Disney Interactive Studios responded to a customer and claimed that they were "currently working on" Discs of TRON, as of this past December. Why they still needed to "work" on the game, considering the completed version had already been reviewed last year in the July/August timeframe . . . I'd really like to know.

Sounds like a bullshit excuse to me. Unless, perhaps, it had something to do with the fact that OXM UK slammed both games. Maybe DI decided to spend a bit more time polishing the games for release? Nah, this is BVG DI we're talking about.

Whatever the reason, for those of you who own a 360 and have Xbox Live: enjoy the games. I have no intention of purchasing a 360. If I'm desperate for an old-school TRON fix, I can always play the games on MAME. So for those of you who check out the games . . . let me know how good (or bad) they are. Was OXM UK justified, when they gave these games the thumbs-down?

UPDATE #1: Team Xbox has posted their review, giving TRON Arcade a score of 6.8. Reactions from fans are decidedly mixed so far: as can be seen here, here, and here. Most cite the game as having inaccurate sound, poor control, and flaky multiplayer that doesn't work very well.

UPDATE #2: Shane Monroe of RetroGaming Radio has started a petition, in the hope of getting Disney Interactive to fix the problems with TRON Arcade. Does any of this seem familiar to you?

UPDATE #3: Several more reviews of TRON Arcade have appeared at Metacritic. The reviews are almost uniformly negative. According to Major Nelson's site, TRON Arcade debuted with sales in the #3 spot and dropped to #4 in the following week. Also, Metacritic lists Discs of TRON with a release date of June 1st, 2008 right now. Looks like the second TRON title is not coming any time soon.

The site Chop Shop has a couple of TRON inspired shirts, as seen above. The shirts range from $20-$25 bucks U.S., and are available in several different sizes. They have some very cool designs. Thanks to Sketch for this info!

And over at the site Instructables, Greg Madison has posted instructions for a do-it-yourself project, on how to create your own TRON-style lamp: with circuit-like patterns, that appear to glow. Nice!