Tron (1982)

Released hot on the heels of Disney’s soon to be cult-classic film ‘Tron’ in 1982, programmer Bill Adams was up against it to somehow interpret the hyper futuristic style of the source material into a playable game. In gameplay terms he may not have completely succeeded, but the cabinet itself is surely one of the most iconic and eye-catching in looks and design. It’s a stunning machine but surely the vast majority of players drawn in by its looks will give up utterly perplexed a short while later. Persevere, however, and there is actually a pretty decent game under the hood.

With each level consisting of 4 repeating mini-games, Tron has a steep learning curve once the player has grasped the basic mechanics of each sub-game enough to progress. On each level there is a markedly big step up in difficulty, for example in the Tank mini-game, the player faces one tank, then three, then six on level 3! We have been told that the difficulty levels off, which has enabled some players to completely master the game and turn it into an endurance challenge. The world record score of over 14 million is testament to this, we’ll be impressed if you can get past level 1 on your first go but don’t give up if you can’t!!