Love me some TRON. This is a really fun game with a great presentation. While the artwork itself is mostly stills from the movie, I don't really have any complaints about it and really enjoy the aesthetics overall. The neon-esque light around the ramps is such an incredible touch, and the sound that accompanies all the little nuances in the game is all just so good. Music of course is incredible and uses a lot of Daft Punk tracks from the film.
This is one of the few John Borg games that I really love. In my LOTR review I complained a bit how George Gomez reused the same layout a bunch of times--Borg is no different. There are a couple games of his that I love so well that I can forgive that copy-paste stuff: Rush, and TRON. But, there's no denying it's strongly similar to several other tables and that does keep me from feeling really engaged with the game. TRON thankfully has so much else going for it that I don't mind.
While only a couple elements really borrow effectively from the film (Disc War Multiball and Light Cycle Multiball), the presentation really is the star here.
PROS:
-A fun shooter. Getting into a flow state in this game feels like absolute magic.
-Incredible light show and sounds, really faithful to the source material
-The several different multiballs all feel unique and fun
-Tough enough (inherently) that even a really fair-playing TRON is still a serious workout
CONS:
-The 'End of Line' jackpots break the game. There's basically no reason to progress through other aspects of the game in a competition setting if you can reliably make the loop-to-side ramp-to-scoop shot.
-Some elements feel unused/underutilized, such as the pop bumpers. Their appearance feels like they just ticked a box--they really don't have a use. You could have put the scoop elsewhere and dropped another ramp in their place and been able to utilize that space for something.
-It's not very deep. It would be really hard to want to fork over the money they're asking for these now, knowing that you're not getting something with immense replay value save for its difficulty and presentation.
-It is ungodly expensive, and doesn't stack up to the others in that $10K+ realm in my opinion. (You can't honestly say you'd rather have a TRON than a Medieval Madness or a Lord of the Rings, can you?)
-Location to location, these vary hugely. Recently, I played two decked-out Pro models within an hour of each other in two different arcades. First one destroyed me--couldn't make anything happen on it. Second one I mashed into oblivion without really trying. Every TRON I've played has been like this.
Would I ever own one? Maybe if one crossed my path for half their going rate, knowing I could mess with it and sell it for a nice profit when it inevitably drove me insane. Would I play one on location? Truly; every chance I get.
Pinside rating
This game received 581 approved Pinsider ratings and currently rates 8.360 /10
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