My all-time favorite arcade game was TRON, probably due to its connection with the Disney movie. I do not know if I played it much when it first came out, but during the time I lived in Broaddus, Texas (1985-1986 era) the local cafe had a TRON machine. I would walk home from school, stop in to get a .25 iced tea, and play TRON. I do not know how good I was at it, but I remember playing past enough levels that the game seemed to repeat and slow down.

Since then, I have only encountered TRON a few times. After moving to Des Moines, Iowa in 1995, I found a TRON in an arcade at our local Adventureland amusement park. I recall playing it there, but the joystick or spinner was in pretty bad shape.

I remember attending an arcade auction and a TRON game came up, but I stopped bidding at $250. I really wish I hadn’t, since years later, a TRON machine was for sale locally … for $1500.

My real interest in TRON came when a local bar-arcade opened and had a machine. I would stop by on my way home from work most days and play until I beat my previous score. Eventually, I had one “perfect” game where I got the score all the way up to where it would flip back over to 0 … and died on purpose. I was concerned that if I rolled the game back to 0, I wouldn’t get to enter my initials ;-)

This earned me a place on Up-Down’s wall of fame.

To the best of my knowledge, that photo is still there, though the TRON machine died not too long after. They did get a TRON back a few times, but they all had issues — spinners that didn’t work, joystick that wouldn’t go in all directions, sound didn’t work, messed up screen, etc. I am very glad I got to play on a “good” machine all those times.

Recently, I came across a video for a CoCo game called ElecTRON. I had forgotten about this TRON clone!

Then, I accidentally came across another CoCo game called KRON, which was another clone of TRON.

I now recall seeing both of these “back in the day” (and I likely had a “borrowed” copy of both of them at some point), but neither was a very good home version of TRON. It’s hard to replicate a game that needs a spinner and flight stick with a trigger ;-)

I just thought I’d share my TRON story, so there it is.

You can play these games online here:

• Play ElectTRON
• Play KRON

Have fun! But probably not…