Born for Wii: Discs of Tron (page 2)

As you may expect of an arcade game predating the great videogame crash, Discs of Tron is a little barebones when it comes to...well, everything. You'll find your blue avatar standing defiantly on a floating platform in the foreground, facing off against the evil Sark in the distance. The goal is to nail Sark with a disc while avoiding the projectiles he throws at you himself. Discs can collide and be destroyed mid-air, or be reflected up close, although the reflector has a limited number of uses. Sark can't reflect your discs, but he makes up for his unfortunate defensive position by being equipped with two additional attacks that can only be destroyed with a disc — try to reflect and you'll be one extra crispy disc warrior.

Sark doesn't exactly play fair. The game will even throw up some barriers to complicate your task of hitting him; the two hits it takes to down him quickly becomes more and more challenging as you advance through the stages, as you're forced to bounce discs off the walls of the arena to catch Sark unawares while simultaneously dodging his attacks. Get far enough into the game and platforms will start moving to different altitudes, and the fact that you can then angle your discs appropriately is pretty cool for 1983, though it certainly doesn't make the game easier.

With that bit of exposition out of the way, it's time to think about what the Wii could do for Discs of Tron. Unlike some games featured here on Born for Wii that simply need a thing added here or there to make for a great game, Discs of Tron has a long way to go. It deserves a complete reimagining, a built-from-the-ground-up remake for the Wii retaining nothing but the discs and the Tron that were once cutting edge.

For starters, Discs of Tron needs to be taken into 3D without sacrificing the Tron aesthetic. The original game did as much as it could to emulate the movie's look, but the hardware was limited. The more recent Xbox Live Arcade release of Discs of Tron does a better job of being...well, Tron. The disc arenas need to pulse with those neon lines and bright blues that are so vivid and identifiable.

The combat of Discs of Tron, better represented in larger, more detailed 3D arenas would remain much the same on the objective level — derezz your opponent with a murderous disc. To once again harp on a concept I've mentioned before, Discs of Tron's gameplay would benefit immensely from Wii MotionPlus. My possible obsession with hurling things aside, a game based around using the Wii to bounce discs off walls, ceilings, and obstacles to take down opponents is potentially awesome.