The movie Tron (1982), despite its admittedly campy story line of a rogue programmer who, digitized into a corporate mainframe, unwittingly becomes the instrument of freedom for the computer world, became a cultural icon for 80s computer culture. The emergence of Silicon Valley, the advent of personal computers, and the Pac-Man / Galaga-dominated suburban video arcades set a colorful backdrop for Disney's fanciful exploration of the digital world. And, in creating Tron, Buena Vista / Disney spared no expense in the creation of revolutionary computer graphics techniques while relying on the vision of now-venerable designers such as Moebius, Ron Cobb, and Syd Mead. The result was a highly stylistic film with an entertaining but often dodgy story line, which has remained a cult favorite for two decades.

All right -- let's face facts. I'm an old Tron fanatic who wanted to do computer animation and get behind the bar of a Light Cycle. As I said before, the story line and acting was far from perfect. However, the technical advances and stylistic achievements aptly captured a moment in electronic culture, and in my opinion, represent one of the more wonderfully stylized worlds on film, ranking with Metropolis and Blade Runner.


	I was somewhat skeptical about whether the world of Tron, which relied so much upon inter-'program' relations, would translate well into a First-Person Shooter.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of Tron, Buena Vista Interactive has released what I would call a first-person 'shooter' that almost doubles as interactive machinima with Tron 2.0. In this scenario, the protagonists of the prior film (Warner and Flynn) have risen to the top of their own software company (assumed to have come from the original ENCOM) and are under threat of a hostile takeover by the evil FutureCom Corporation, possibly to acquire your company's secrets of digitizing matter. Your character is Jet (short for Jethro -- a bit of a stretch) Bradley, son of Alan, young prodigy of the company, and erstwhile hacker. In short, when there is trouble in the network, the Net accidentally recognizes you for your father and digitizes you, so that you can fight a viral infection called 'the Corruption' and then make your way back to the physical world.

To go beyond that would mean to spoil the plot of the game, but I was somewhat skeptical about whether the world of Tron, which relied so much upon inter-'program' relations, would translate well into a First-Person Shooter. But perhaps the lower-tech culture of social interaction that unfolds through playing Space Invaders at the local arcade does translate into the more solitary existence of an avatar in a level-based FPS. One could draw an analogy and declare that while the early 80s were Pac-Man and Defender, the 00s are more akin to Max Payne and Quake, which would make perfect sense. In this way, Tron 2.0 might be seen as a fine translation of the cultural mirror that its cinematic forerunner created.

Another point of interest referred to by the game are the changes in the online world that have occurred after twenty years. The mainframe has given way to a net of clusters, networks, and connected devices, and your avatar (Jet) must make his way through the Net to battle the Corruption. This takes you to a number of contracting digital environments, from a cutting edge server to ENCOM's old mainframe (it's still hooked to the Net) and even a PDA, which is obviously made up only of a scant handful of rooms.