My very first videogame purchase! Acquired at a Commercial Liquidators auction down in San Marcos, TX in late 1996 (I forget the exact date), for $40.  As you can see, my cabinet isn't exactly in the best shape...  although considering the storage conditions I suspect it was kept in before I got it, it's held up pretty well; I'd give the cabinet a B+ for structural integrity (no chunks knocked off the corners, broken marquees, etc.) and a C+ for the artwork, mostly because of the damage to the side art.

Then again, most of the TRON games I've seen have had scuffed side-art; it doesn't seem to hold up well even at the best of times...  I suspect part of the reason is that the strangely-shaped cabinet makes it impossible to get a moving dolly underneath it from the front or back, so operators would move them around lying on their sides, and most probably didn't worry too much about putting protective padding between the game and the dolly.

TRON was, of course, based on the 1982 Disney movie of the same name.  There had been videogames based on movies before (some more successful than others – remember the abysmal "E.T." game cartridge for the Atari 2600?); but as the first computer-animated feature film*, with a script revolving around a human "user" trapped inside a computer and forced to play life-or-death versions of his own games, TRON was a natural candidate for translation.  In fact, Bally/Midway made two games based on the movie; this one, and a later sequel called DISCS OF TRON.  DISCS was originally intended to be a fifth stage in the original TRON game, but Bally/Midway – who were obligated by contract to get the game to market at the same time as the movie's debut – dropped the idea after deciding that there wasn't enough time to include the "Discs" level and still get the game out the door in time.  In hindsight, that was probably for the best; with the time and code-space pressures removed, the programmers were able to add a lot of refinements to the Discs game and make it more interesting than it probably would have been if it had been rushed to completion and shoehorned into TRON's program space next to the other four stages.

The most unusual feature of TRON, physically, is the unique cabinet design, which features rather complex detailing (reminiscent of the movie's set designs) all over the interior cabinet surfaces.  The detailing is done in fluorescent paint, which glows when the blacklight tube just underneath the monitor is on.  Another light, underneath the control panel, causes the translucent-blue joystick and the front of the control panel to light up and glow as well.  To further enhance the player environment, a backlit graphic of the MCP Cone and the surrounding mesa can be seen through the oddly-shaped window just above the monitor.

Like many of my games, TRON was in "unknown" condition when I bought it at the auction.  When I first powered it up, all I could get on the screen was solid white on the right side and garbage on the left.  This one required a fair amount of diagnostic work to get running; the power-supply board was shot, thanks to a leaky NiCd battery, the interconnect cables in the MCR-II board sandwich were in questionable condition, and a couple of the RAM chips on the CPU and Super Sound-I/O board were bad as well.  Fortunately, none of the ROMs were bad, so a new power supply board (the old one was, sadly, pretty much irrepairable), plus new interconnect cables and RAM chips, brought TRON back to life.  (Along with a whole new set of fluorescent tubes and starters, of course!)

First encounter with a TRON arcade game: the movie theater in Salt Lake City where I first went to see the movie.   Whoever ran that theater was thinking ahead...  Unlike most of the other games in my collection, though, TRON was pretty easy to come by, so I played it in quite a few different locations over the years.

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(*) TRON trivia: Actually, TRON wasn't quite as computer-animated as most people thought.  Many articles about the movie, especially pre-release articles in magazines like Starlog, initially stated that almost 50% of the movie was done via computer; in the months after the film's release, though, that number steadily declined with each passing article, until the final figure settled around 10-15% instead.  Much of what had been assumed to be CGI, especially the sets and props the actors moved around in and interacted with, had actually come out of Disney's traditional animation department.  It's quite a tribute to the talents and expertise of the Disney animators and filmmakers that so many people had such a hard time telling the difference!

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TRON is a multistage game consisting of four stages, or "sectors", per level, each sector containing a different game based on elements from the movie.  You, as TRON, must conquer each sector before you can progress to the next level; when you finish a sector (or lose a life), you are returned to a "sector map" that shows which sectors remain to be completed in that level.  (Each stage appears only once in each level, but I could never tell if their order on the map was random or not.)  You will have 10 seconds to pick a sector; if you fail to choose one before the timer expires, the game will choose one for you at random.

You control TRON via the joystick and spinner controls on the front panel.  The joystick moves you around, the spinner aims your "warrior's disc", and the trigger on the stick hurls your disc in the desired direction.  (Except in the Light Cycle level, where the trigger controls your speed and the spinner has no effect.)

You start with anywhere from 2 - 9 men (operator selectable), and receive an extra man at operator-selectable intervals (usually 20,000 points).  TRON has a limited buy-in feature, to continue a game where you left off; this can be enabled or disabled via a DIP switch.  Operator settings and high scores are stored in battery backed-up RAM; TRON will hold the ten highest scores, and allows you to enter your initials.  (But for some reason, it only allows two initials instead of the usual three – which annoyed me to no end, since I always signed my initials "MCP" on games after the movie came out. )

An interesting touch, by the way, is that the levels are not simply numbered 1, 2, 3, 4... like in most games, but are instead named after programming languages, progressing from RPL through BASIC, FORTRAN, ASSEMBLER... finally up to USER.  According to the flyer, there are 22 levels.  (Personally, I keep getting stopped at the ASSEMBLER level's tank wave; as always, my tank appears immediately to the left of the teleporter diamond, but in the ASSEMBLER-level tank wave there are two tanks in the horizontal lanes immediately above and below me, and four other tanks elsewhere in the grid.  I have yet to figure out how to get past them; they're too close for me to escape being shot if I try to cross the lanes, and if I try to bank-shot one of them then the other gets to my vertical lane, turns, and fires point-blank at me before I can get out of the lane.)

I.O. TOWER (INPUT-OUTPUT TOWER)
ENTER FLASHING CIRCLE BEFORE TIMER EXPIRES

In this challenge, Tron is armed with his "light disc" and must destroy the deadly grid bugs that emerge from the grid surrounding the I.O. tower.  As the grid bugs grow outwards from tiny squares to mature adults, they multiply and populate the entire screen if not stopped.  If they touch Tron, they can "derezz" him, so his objective is to enter the I.O. tower to gain another disc, increasing his firepower before the timer expires.

Tips:

In later levels, the "Bit" will make a random appearance during this stage.  The Bit doesn't actually do anything, but if you can grab it, you get bonus points.

In later levels, the graphics processor can't keep up with the number of bugs.  Be careful about getting too close to large clusters; you may shoot one, only to discover another hiding "invisibly" behind the first.

However much time is left on the timer will be awarded to you as bonus points when you enter the Tower.

Another bit of TRON film trivia: because the Grid Bugs were only seen for a couple of seconds in the film, many people have speculated that their appearance was included at the last minute, solely as a tie-in to the Bally/Midway game.  In fact, the Grid Bug sequence in the movie came well before the game was even planned; it was a bit of test footage from very early in TRON's production, when it was originally planned to be a traditional cel-animated feature.  It was the programmers at Bally/Midway who decided to transplant the rapidly-multiplying Bugs into their game.

 

M.C.P. (MASTER CONTROL PROGRAM)
TRY TO ENTER THE MCP CONE

In this domain, Tron's objective is to blast a hole in the rotating colored column of the MCP as it descends towards him.  If it touches him, he will be "derezzed."  If Tron reaches the Cone of Light above the MCP, he has accomplished his objective.

Tips:

If you destroy all of the blocks, you get a 1,000-point bonus.

The blocks rotate and descend at different rates on each level.  Be sure to go for the "all blocks destroyed" bonus on the early levels, as once you get past level 5 they will rotate or descend too rapidly on most higher levels for you to get them all before you're forced into the MCP cone.

 

TANK MAZE
DESTROY ALL ENEMY TANKS

Tron drives a red tank through the maze, watching for Sark's blue enemy tanks.  Tron's tank has the unique ability to fire bouncing energy pellets, can fire around corners, and has a rotating turret.  The enemy tanks can fire only in the direction of travel, and must be hit three times to be destroyed.  The number of tanks increases as a player earns higher racks.  Tron has one other advantage: the pink diamond "random relocator" in the center of the maze can relocate him to a random location in the maze when entered.

Tips:

The center diamond is a good hiding place   the enemy tanks' shots can't hit you if you can duck "halfway" into the block, far enough inside to get your tank's rear edge off of the blue line running down the center of each lane but not so far as to trip the teleporter.  Do this, and you can pick off the opposing tanks with near-impunity as long as they don't get close enough to ram you.

On certain levels (every 5th level if the game set to difficulty 1), the enemy tanks are replaced with red Recognizers.  The Recos can't shoot at you, but they race through the maze nearly twice as fast as the tanks as they hunt you down, so if they get into the same lane as your tank you have almost no chance of outrunning them, and precious little time to shoot them before they get to you.

 

LIGHT CYCTLE GRID
AVOID HITTING LIGHT TRACES AND WALLS
USE TRIGGER FOR SPEED CONTROL

Tron is the blue cycle and can control his speed by using the trigger control.  His objective is to box in his opponents, forcing them to run out of territory.  The cycles' light traces are deadly if crossed, and the walls are just as dangerous if they are hit head-on.  With each rack completed, the number of cycles increases for an even greater challenge.

Tips:

The one advantage you have over your opponents is that you can control your speed, electing to go faster or slower using the joystick trigger, while the enemy cycles have to travel at a fixed speed.  This means that you can box them in at high speed, then slow down to keep yourself from running out of open space as quickly while you wait for them to meet their inevitable demise.

The behaviour of the cycles follows a consistent pattern on each level – so, like PAC-MAN, it is possible to find a fixed pattern which will defeat the cycles each time.

Be sure to glance at the bottom of the screen during the Domain Selection to see what level you're on; if the arcade operator changes the difficulty setting of the game, then the game starts skipping over "easier" levels to put you up against the more difficult levels more quickly.

TRON runs on the Bally/Midway MCR-II archetecture, which uses Z-80 microprocessors and AY-3-8910 sound generators &ndash both of which are common and widely-used chips, as were the RAMs, ROMs, and the 7400-series logic surrounding them, so this system is relatively easy to troubleshoot and find spare parts for.  The MCR-II system was used for a number of their other games as well – but, as was the typical practice of many manufacturers, Bally/Midway scrambled the player-control pin assignments around for each game to make it more difficult for operators to simply convert one game to another just by copying the ROMs, so rigging TRON to play any other MCR-II games would require some modifications to the wiring harness (or to the software).  As for rigging it to play the sequel game DISCS OF TRON (which I did think about doing, because let's face it, a TRON Multigame would be really cool ) – unfortunately, DISCS has some fairly major hardware differences.  Not only does it require an extra button on the joystick for the "deflect" control, plus a different and more complex spinner control that can be pulled up and pushed down to allow for vertical as well as horizontal aiming, but it also runs on the next-generation MCR-III archetecture instead of TRON's MCR-II and uses a horizontally-mounted monitor, with the image reflected off of a partial mirror with illuminated background art behind it, rather than a directly-viewed vertical-mount monitor like TRON.  While the control-panel and MCR-II vs. MCR-III issues could possibly be overcome with some creative modifications to the panel and to the wiring harnesses, I can't see any practical way to overcome the horizontal vs. vertical display problem.

The TRON / MCR-II power supply board.  If you acquire any Bally/Midway MCR-series games, the first thing you should do is remove the NiCd battery from this board!!  Since the board has no charge-regulation circuitry, the battery has an unfortunate tendancy to eventually rupture and leak its innards all over the board, which corrodes the solder joints and eats away at the copper traces.  This is exactly what happened to the original P/S board in mine; the damage was so bad, in fact, that when I tried to remove the corroded components I discovered that the copper traces on the PCB had been undermined and would lift off with the slightest provocation.  After spending a frustrating evening trying to depopulate the board with a vacuum-driven desoldering station, I finally gave up and was just about to wire in a modern switching supply when I caught a "for sale" post on rec.games.video.arcade.collecting from a collector who had an assortment of spare boards he wanted to sell, and was able to buy a replacement original P/S board instead.

Another problem with the Power Supply board is that the CPU-reset circuit, which is supposed to ensure a clean reset if the line voltage does a momentary brown-out, tends to get flaky over time and hold the board in reset indefinitely.  The simplest cure for this is to just clip that wire on the molex connector and disconnect the reset circuit.  I suppose if I felt like it, I could wire in a modern CPU reset-supervisor chip to drive the line, but it doesn't seem to be required; my TRON runs just fine without it, and so do those of various other collectors who've done the same "fix".

The MCR-II board stack, consisting of the Super Sound I/O board, the Video board, and the CPU board.  (Note that their functional divisions aren't quite as clear as the names would suggest, given that the program ROMs are up on the Super Sound I/O board...)  If you buy a TRON, or any other game based on the Bally/Midway MCR-II/III architectures, one of the first things you should do is replace the interconnect cables between the three boards; the original mylar-sandwich cables used by Bally/Midway are cheap P.O.S.'s, and are one of the most common causes of system failure in these games – the heat of continuous operation gets to them, the layers separate, and all of a sudden your game quits working.  This is one of those "if it ain't broke, fix it anyway" situations, because those cables will go bad on you sooner or later, most likely right when you're trying to impress a friend with your collection.   You can either make your own cables, as I did, or just use common 50-pin SCSI cables (assuming you can still find them these days!).  If you choose the latter course, make sure you use the shortest cables you can find (I recommend buying a couple of 7-device cables like they use in disk arrays, then cutting three sections each from the drive-connector end), line up the pins consistently on both sides, and keep track of where your Pin#1's are – the actual connectors on the board are single-row connectors with less than 25 pins, not dual-row like a SCSI cable, so it's easy to miss the mark.  Unfortunately, IDE cables won't work, as they're one pin too short.

If you are trying to restore a TRON, be aware that there are three different kinds of fluorescent tubes used in the light fixtures.  The tubes behind the TRON-logo marquee and the MCP Cone background are standard white-light tubes, and the one which is located in the fixture just below the monitor (the purplish-looking one) is a standard "black-light" tube...  but the fourth tube, located underneath the control panel to light up the lower marquee and joystick, is what's oxymoronically called a "white black-light" – which means it emits both white light and ultraviolet.  These, unfortunately, are a bit harder to come by; your best bet is to look in your local Yellow Pages for a specialty-lighting store that deals specifically in unusual and specialized light bulbs.  (The one I deal with locally is simply called "The Lightbulb Shop", which at least tells you exactly what they're all about!)  "White blacklights" aren't overly expensive – last time I bought some, they were only about a dollar or two more than a standard blacklight tube.

Note that you can substitute another regular white-light tube if you just can't find the correct "white black-light", but you won't get the full effect.  "Gro-Lite" tubes, sold for use in growing plants indoors, will also work since they emit some UV, but their visible-light spectrum is a bit shifted towards the yellow end to simulate sunlight, so they won't look quite right either.  (And at twice the price of a normal black-light tube, they're also bloody expensive.)