Seems that Issue #4 of TRON: The Ghost In the Machine by SLG Publishing, has now slipped to June.

Sigh.

Well, this is getting interesting. Now there is a rumor of another TRON title that's going to appear on the 360.

There are no other details available at this time. I'm betting Disney Interactive Studios probably isn't too happy that the public is finding out so quickly about these, before they're even announced.

From the little information that is available, it looks like the original TRON Arcade game will also be appearing on Xbox Live Arcade for the 360.

I think it would be foolish to not make these new TRON games cross-platform, and keep them Xbox 360 only. If they're really serious about going through with these, then at least fight fire with fire by enhancing them and releasing them on as many platforms as possible. Including the one where the most people are playing the originals using MAME, the PC. Make it available on Games for Windows Live. And how about the Wii, taking advantage of the Wiimotes?

April 26th UPDATE: It seems DI has confirmed that TRON and Discs of TRON are coming, in a sly way.

Thanks again to MChilds for this latest news tip.

Unfortunately, I won't be "ready" to combat Sark if he's going to appear on the Xbox 360 only. In fact, let's have a couple of polls . . . to see what platforms people want to see these games appear on, and what they expect out of the games.

December 6th, 2008 UPDATE: These polls are now closed. Please see this article for the results. Thank you to everyone who participated in the polls!

Disney Interactive Studios will apparently be releasing the arcade classic Discs of TRON for the Xbox 360, on Xbox Live Arcade.

While this is a commendable move and I wish DI the best of success with this release . . . why anyone would want to pay for Discs of TRON when they can play it for free on any one of the various ports of MAME, I really couldn't tell you. Of course, obtaining the ROM files for the game without actually owning the arcade machine is technically illegal. But do any of you honestly believe that the vast majority of people playing DOT on MAME, actually own the machine?

Discs of TRON is also available as an unlockable on TRON 2.0: Killer App for the Gameboy Advance, and is a decent (if not incredible) emulation of the game. A used GBA and Killer App cartridge could probably be picked up at a reasonable enough price, to be another compelling alternative to the release on Xbox Live Arcade. Especially due to the fact that you'd be getting multiple games in one. (If you can find the cart, that is.)

It's possible the game may be updated with new gameplay or graphics for Live Arcade, but I highly suspect it will just be a straight port with minimal enhancements (if any). We'll see, I guess.

Thanks to MChilds for the tip!

The Boxhat site has been down for almost 24 hours now. If you visit the site, you'll simply get a blank page. I'm not sure what the situation is, but if I find out before the site goes back up: I'll update this article to mention the reason.

I suspect this downtime may have something to do with Bigred's (the site owner's) attempt to move the site to a new host, to help put an end to the downtime once and for all. But at present, I don't know the actual cause for certain.

April 21st UPDATE: Boxhat has come back online some time within the last 2-3 hours, as of the time of this writing. This also means that the download links that were temporarily broken, will be working again. Still, I intend to start adding file mirrors in case any more downtime occurs again in the future.

I prefer to keep any articles I post strictly related to news, and other items that are of interest or entertaining to TRON fans. But once in a while, something really important will come up that involves the community itself and the state it's in. This is one of those times. And I feel it's important people are made aware of it.

Every gaming community has its dramas . . . and the TRON 2.0 community is certainly not immune to it, despite its small size.

If you're playing TRON 2.0 Multiplayer right now, I think you should read Avi's latest post on his new MySpace blog. Avi is a very active member of the community, who I also think deserves a lot of kudos for his efforts to help bring life back to TRON 2.0 Multiplayer.

Some of the language in his post is a bit strong, but I believe his message is important and everyone playing the game should definitely read it.

Somehow, I completely missed this. Big thanks to Avi for letting me know about it.

An example of a good April Fool's joke is this year's joke at TRON-Sector, which can still be seen as the first news article on the front page at the time of this writing. (TRON-Sector Going Retro.) Nice work, TheReelTodd! :)

However, there was also a bad April Fool's joke (bad, as in it could really fool and scare people) that seems to have originated on the site Kuro5hin. For those of you who don't know: Kuro5hin is a news site, of sorts. One that lets its users write the stories. The problem is, anyone can write anything they want, whether it's true or not.

Here is the link to the fake story on Kuro5hin:
Homeland Security Classifies TRON as "Sensitive"

Of course, the author wrote this fake story early (on March 29th) in an attempt to add legitimacy. A lot of April Fool's pranksters release their jokes early to try and create a greater impact, because most people will think that they won't have a prank pulled on them until the day in question arrives.

Here is why this story is obviously fake and an April Fool's joke:

1. As mentioned in the comments for this "story", the name of the FBI agent mentioned is "Lirpa Sloof".  April Fool's spelled backwards.
   
2. If that's not enough, then look at the top of the article.  Written by "ewhac" in "Fiction".  Busted!  Fiction, not fact.

I have to give the writer credit though, for creating a fairly plausible story that probably could fool quite a lot of people. Nice work. But it's important that everyone realizes it's just a prank and not to take it seriously.

Oh, and while an HD-DVD release of TRON would be nice: again, there's no evidence so far that Disney is planning to do an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray release of TRON. On the other hand, I guess it's nice to see this fake story mention TRON 2.0. There are still a lot of people who don't know it exists, and I see proof of that all the time.

As can be seen on the Release Schedule page of the SLG Publishing site, Issue #4 of TRON: The Ghost In the Machine has been delayed until May.

Below you will find download links to TRON: The Ultimate Video Radio Special.

TRON: The Ultimate Video Radio Special Part 1 - 4.3 MB, 24m 59s
TRON: The Ultimate Video Radio Special Part 2 - 4.9 MB, 28m 16s

According to the file authoring information, these MP3s originally came from The Unofficial TRON Page in 1998, which is no longer around. The files are low quality (24 kbps) but are still clearly understandable.

The first part doesn't contain too much of interest, but the second part certainly does. Not only do we hear from Steven Lisberger (writer and director of TRON), but also David Warner (who played the parts of Dillinger, Sark, and the MCP). I have never heard David being interviewed about TRON before, so it was a treat to hear him talking about it. And to boot, there is also some deleted dialogue from the film I've never heard before.

This dialogue is not anywhere on the 20th Anniversary DVD as an extra. It features programs from the MCP's faction, who talk about Flynn after he first appears in the electronic world. (It can be found at approximately the 15:50 mark of Part 2.) This definitely made the show worth listening to!

There are also a couple of other noteworthy things that can be heard in the special as a whole: such as the fact that Ron Howard admitted he was a video game nut, and that the special is littered with excerpts of songs from the album Pac-Man Fever by Buckner and Garcia. (Which I still have somewhere, from when I was a kid.)

Many thanks to LDSO member 9VoltChicken, for providing me with both the files themselves and the inspiration for this article.

Here are some recent concept sketches by LDSO member Xistence, from his The Digital Messiah total conversion for TRON 2.0.