After the release of Tron, the movie, in the early 80’s there was a spark of arcade game adaptations. Many young teenagers at the time had dreams of being part of this sci-fi fantasy setting, I think this was recognized by developers, or they too were inspired, as Midway developed and released a few of these Tron adaptations.

One of these games was called Discs of Tron, now this game was originally released in 1983, the first question you should be asking now, is why release it to Xbox LIVE arcade now? We’ll come to that issue later, however the game then was relatively popular. Discs of Tron is based on one of the short scenes in the movie, basically the player starts on a circular platform this increases into several platforms as the game progresses. Opposite the player is "Sark", Tron's enemy, and he must "derez" him by throwing circular data disks at him. Simple, but frustrating towards the end of the game.

Gameplay:

The first point to make is that this game is about 25 years old now, I know that Xbox LIVE is about classics but this is quite extraordinary. It would be okay if the game was polished up considerably and had some nifty features to make it interesting, but it really hasn’t changed. So the slight chance that this game may interest the younger audience has now completely gone.

Discs of Tron certainly feels out of place, not just within the era but upon the Xbox 360. The controls are fairly clumsy upon the analog sticks, the game relies on accuracy and quick movement and you just can’t do this with the current setup. The simple gameplay will get old fast, there are many classic games which you can jump back into and enjoy nearly as much as you used to, Discs of Tron on the other hand just hasn’t aged very well. You’ll find that after you’ve completed the first few stages it will start to frustrate you, and for an Xbox Live arcade game, it isn’t worth the frustration.

The expansion to the game was multi-player, you’d expect the developer to include a vs. mode, but there is no such thing. Instead, you have two separate games which either share a score for co-op or have opposing scores for head-to-head, this really doesn’t add much to the gameplay value at all, except having a second screen with another controller. There’s also online multiplayer, but you’ll rarely find anyone, and when you do, there’s the usual connectivity issues with arcade games.

I can’t really think of many positive reasons for playing this game, except for people who want to relive their childhood memories of playing Tron games or arcade games in general, but is that really worth paying 400 points for?

Graphics:

Discs of Tron graphically you can’t really expect much but bright neon coloured lights, and it looks very much like that. The difference here though, you have the choice to display it in HD so it looks even brighter. It’s quite hard to notice any major differences between the original version and this one in SD. Maybe there has been straightening of the "jaggies", but nothing mind blowing, the usual polish up for it to be suitable on the Xbox 360 console.

Sound:

The sound orientates around its gameplay sound effects,using typical arcade noises such as "bleeps" and "buzzes" when you fire your discs. The fast paced gameplay consists mainly of a merging of these noises, I suppose it suits the theme. The major problem I had though was understanding what Sark said when he was "de-rezzed" from the game,it seems to be a mumble of jitter, not the worst of the games problems.

Longevity:

This game would have lasted you a sufficient amount of time for its cost if it had a reasonable multiplayer and a solid control scheme, however, it doesn’t have any of these. This game will probably end for you when you reach the later levels of the single player, as it’s nearly impossible to complete with its awkward control scheme.

Overall:

Discs of Tron on Xbox 360 is a good representation of how sloppy some of the Xbox Live Arcade games are at the moment. Now and again you get the arcade game which is worth its money, that’s if you can trundle through the pointless ports, like this one, which really should be free.
I would only recommend this game to you if you’re trying to build up a collection of classic arcade games, or, if you want some easy gamer points. If you buy this game for any other reason I can almost certainly say you’ll be disappointed, I would advise you to look else where.