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TRON Xbox Live Arcade Releases To Commence January 9th, 2008

By TronFAQ on Monday, January 07, 2008 at 8:44 PM
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.
 
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6 comments so far.

  1. Anonymous January 09, 2008 9:59 PM
    Well, I got home and purchased Tron for the 360. The first thing I liked was the cool Tron splash screen. It would make a nice piece of wallpaper on your computer. However, the game is just O.K. You can play the classic version or the enhanced version. Classic is exactly like you would play on MAME. I didn't really like the enhanced version though. The sound was more muffled and the visuals looked like games you would play off of shockwave.com. That isn't bad, it's just too cartoony/flashy for my nostalgic taste.

    The controls took some time to get used too, especially with the tank level. You can't spin the turret around as fast as you would in MAME or the arcade.

    Overall I it's worth the 5 bucks in microsoft points. I've spend 5 bucks on worse things, and it will go nicely with my dig dug and time pilot games.

    I was actually more excited to spend the 100 microsoft points on the Tron gamertag pics.

    Also, no Discs of Tron yet.
  2. TronFAQ January 10, 2008 5:44 PM
    Thanks for the review, Load. Your comments are more-or-less in line with what a lot of other people are saying. That the game could have been better. Apparently, there was some merit to OXM UK's review, after all.

    I suspect the same kinds of issues will crop up in Discs of TRON when it's released on XBLA. Seems Disney hasn't learned anything since TRON 2.0.
  3. Anonymous January 15, 2008 3:02 PM
    *update*

    I played the muliplayer...yeah...it sucks. Well, not the game itself, (its just the single player game), but the lag is horrible. I don't even know how to describe how horrible it is. It's like trying to play Unreal 3 on a Pentium III.

    The muliplay it self is pretty easy. You play the single player game as someone else plays the single player game. You can see what they are doing in a small box on the right. You can either play "co-op points", or "whoever loses all their players first loses", which is stupid. The person I played went to the tank level and just went around and around in circles until I got to a level that was too hard. What a joke! booooooring!
  4. TronFAQ January 16, 2008 3:51 PM
    You can't directly compete, head-to-head? I thought they'd at least let two players duke it out on the Light Cycle and Tank grids.

    So instead, it's basically just a race to see who can get the farthest through the levels? That's kind of lame. :p
  5. Unknown January 16, 2008 6:05 PM
    This comment has been removed by the author.
  6. Anonymous January 16, 2008 6:06 PM
    Yeah, it's lame. The "Co-op" is each person plays the single player and when both players finally lose all of their players, the scores are combined. The only "Vs." mode that might be cool, (except for the lag), is the Speed Mode. You both start off in single play, the person who gets to the next level first makes the other person's game play faster.

    But like I said, the lag is so horrible, we may never see this...

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