A Visit To Flynn’s Arcade, The Home Of Tron

That was... a great night. The searching, the codes, the swag, it was the stuff geek dreams are made of.

I wish I could have had more time with Space Paranoids, I was just getting the hang of it! The controls seemed wonky, until I realized that it's not like a regular FPS where you're a soldier on foot, you have to keep track of which way your tank treads are pointing with the diagram at the bottom of the screen.

Wow wish I was there!

Aaron Petrey

For anyone who is interested, the original Flynn's building is located here in Culver City, CA. It is currently a restaurant called Akasha.

You can see a glimpse of it in the original trailer.

the sign just says strip club :)

Red_Dragon

Wow. Just wow. That is utter sex. It makes me creamy just looking at the pictures.

@Heath Doolin: What were the codes for?

@Orionsaint:

Greetings program!

I don't know how it did in the box-office, but I saw it countless times, loving every minute of it obviously.

GtheMVP99

@grahamwest: Isn't that Emilio Estevez in the 80's? Cool find.

Snappywave: Subtitle option for the Deaf please

Anyone else who was at Flynn's able to get the codes after beating a few levels of Space Paranoids?

We got 2

Heath Doolin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9iXVNSO-hY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va-05JPQ5Xk

(Not my videos.)

(EDIT: And now I have botched the embed. Ack.)

O RLY? When do they close it down? I have airfare credits. I could fly down for a daytrip. And I could watch my Japanese copy of Tron on UMD during the flight. No I don't have a costume... ;_;

Brackynews

Did you guys keep some of your "Flynn's Arcade" tokens?

I'm sure Bash would appreciate a special delivery of at least one of them : )

oo its cool
sorry to say that arcades culture dies

Francuzzz1010

@Snappywave: Subtitle option for the Deaf please:
Or this arcade from a segment in a TV-movie, The Bishop Of Battle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptKqdOXI5YQ

grahamwest

@SwapnaPandion II: Tron only sold about 35,000 units. Bally management told George (Gomez, its designer) that it wasn't a bad number for his first game but he'd better do more with his next. That next game was Spy Hunter and sold 70,000 or more.

It's funny to say 'only' with that sort of number, in the 1990s we'd have been dancing in the street for selling that many.

grahamwest

I made a bad choice skipping Comic-Con this year. I would've stayed in Flynn's arcade the entire time. :D

When are motorcycle manufacturers going to come to their senses and make a REAL LIFE tron styled motorcycle???!!!

@Phydeaux: WarGames had an arcade.. didn't recall :(

The most recent one I just saw...
Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Snappywave: Subtitle option for the Deaf please

All this talk about the new TRON movie. Has anyone even asked the TRON Guy if he likes it? Hehe.

@SwapnaPandion II:

I'm sorry but that's just not true. The TRON movie was a flop. I was there when it came out. The games were another story.

It's funny because I remember watching TRON in 82 and when the part with 'Space Paranoids' came on. I said to myself, oh yeah right, no game is that advanced! What a lie! Now it exist and compared to today's games. It's a joke!, hehe.

@Nudgenudge: The light cycle sequence is my five year old son's favorite part. Every time he watches the movie he has to watch it at least 3 times. And his favorite iPod Touch game is the Light Cycle game.

After the first time he watched Tron he was playing with some cars and I heard him say "Run them into your jet walls!"

Anyone here played Tron 2.0? That was actually decent. I enjoyed it for a good while; multiplayer too.

linky: http://www.viddler.com/explore/xarph/videos/1/

@Archaotic: I remember playing the Tron part and somehow remembering a distant past I was not aware if I was a part of it or not.

Somehow I recalled it, but did not remember it all. Need to watch it.

"Use the buzz-bomb, idiot!"

TheWaffle

@TitillatedOcelot: Yeah, I know. Nobody actually "confirmed" this track but I think it is safe to assume.

mrsoave

@Nudgenudge: Graphically dated? I've always felt that the cgi, rudimentary though it may be, is perfectly in keeping with the style and feel of the film. The graphics are simple, yes, but that gives them a bold, clean beauty that still holds up today. Crucially however, the continuity of the graphics is maintained throughout the film and nothing ever feels out of place or jarring. If there was ever a film that deserved a sequel, it's a tron. If disney mess this up, I will de-rezz them hard, and in the face.

End of line.

@Archaotic: what is sadder, is the fact the many movies have tried to capitalize on what tron was doing, and have failed miserably. nice to see the new movie is bringing familiar crew. cant wait to see in imax 3D

@madammina: Oh, I had HEARD of it, I just never actually went out of my way to SEE it. After I beat KH2, I was like "fuck it, gotta go see this now".

It made me sad that David Warner didn't play Sark, even though they got a damn good soundalike.

@mrsoave: You sir, made my Sunday hangover a little easier to swallow

chemical_eng_mx

@mrsoave: From what I heard, they're doing the whole soundtrack.

*applause*

Now THAT is hype done up right.

@Snappywave: Subtitle option for the Deaf please: The arcade in WarGames. That was a roomy place. Tables in the middle, snack bar, an arcade done right.

Tron was huge in it's day. The 3 arcades that were in my 'small' town(18,000 people) at the time all had it. I remember when the last arcade here shut down what a loss. But when home consoles really picked up, it really killed them. I do miss the sounds, nothing quite like it.

I also remember waking up early on Saturday mornings so I could get to the arcade first, so I could be the first one to request certain machines turned on. Lot of games based off movies, lot of movies with input from arcade games.

SwapnaPandion II

If you want the song they played during this exhibit (supposedly the new Daft Punk song), here is the link: http://iphonefire.net/ilictronixstaff/tracks/DaftPunk-TronLegacyTheme(ReworkedByCrydaLuv).mp3

mrsoave

You're saying music changed from Journey tracks to "Daft Punk" style music, curse you! It probably WAS Daft Punk, they're scoring Tron Legacy, you were probably some of the fisrt persons to hear some of the music they made for the movie, I envy anyone who was there.

chemical_eng_mx

@Archaotic:

EXACT same story here!

Except, I had heard of it before. (Go calenders!)

I Feel bad for the programmers. Having to do the CG line by line..

madammina

holy smokes! I didn't know this existed in real life. It would be cool to make a list of arcades that starred in famous movies. Here are some examples:

- Mall arcade in T2
- Arcades in The Wizard

What about Starfighter?

Snappywave: Subtitle option for the Deaf please

@Nudgenudge: I think you're exactly right. Everyone that is anyone in the field of motion picture CG either got their start on Tron, worked for someone who was, or were directly inspired by it, so budget-be-damned for the sequel.

It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, so I'm glad to hear it's getting the deluxe treatment.

@Archaotic: Your love of Kingdom Hearts has made me your latest follower. ;D

DarthXehanort

@Nudgenudge: I also heard it competed with ET.

But any projects connected with Pixar can't be all that bad, can it? If there was a digitally remastered BD copy of it I'd probably want to watch that.

@Kuwabara Kazuo: it was a cult classic, never big in numbers (near flopping). In fact, the game produced from the movie was the thing that created an audience for the movie.
So, ne direct sequels, since its "too risky" status. Until now, and I'm pretty sure the fact that a lot of Pixar heads became Disney heads 2-3 years ago (John Lasseter for example) did help this project. C'mon, the Pixar guys have to venerate Tron, that's the ancestor.

Also, why can't you watch it now? Sure, it's graphically dated (first CGIs in movie history), but the universe, the story and the characters are still quite good. Plus, the lightcycle fight scene is always great.

Nudgenudge

Most importantly - does it have Street Fighter 4?

Scotsdale

It saddens me that all this talk of Tron just reminds me of Kingdom Hearts 2.

I never saw Tron until after I played KH2, sad to say. The Blockbuster near my college didn't carry it on DVD, so I actually had to rent the VHS. That...did not look good on my TV. :[

Classic.

Lazz

Was Tron really big in its day? I wasn't gifted to be born on its timeline. It looks and sounds cool but I could never watch the movie now in all its painful glory.

I wish we had any arcades where I live..well I take that back, we have a couple but they really only have ticket games, mostly places for little kids birthday parties.

I know not a lot of great American arcade games get released anymore (or at least I don't keep up with them if they do) but I'd still like to play some old favorites and maybe they could import some?

With video games being so popular now a days you'd think arcades would be able to at least make some money.

But I'm sure they take quite a bit of capital to start up and it is a big risk.

Here's a link to a freeware fan-produced Space Paranoids...
http://www.tron-sector.com/games/paranoids/

Thats pretty wicked sick...

FLYBOY611