tron-2.0 posts

As has been stated many times before, the PC game industry isn't dead by any means. It is changing from a retail brick-and-mortar business model to one where PC laptop and desktop owners will simply purchase and download a game to their hard drive or perhaps use cloud-based streaming technology to play their games.

As a result of this new way of selling PC games we are seeing PC game titles that have been released for years that are still selling copies via download. Just a few years ago, publishers released PC games to retail stores and if they didn't immediately catch on in unit sales, well, that would be it. You might be able to find some older PC games in online auction web sites but in many cases the years of hard work by a development team would be over.

However we think that there are a number of older but still great PC games that should be made available for download yet again that are not yet on the library of titles for Steam, Direct2Drive or GoG.com. We suspect that the main reason for this is publishing rights issues. In any case, in the spirit of the upcoming Halloween holiday, here are 10 PC games that we think should come back from the dead of the retail box coffin and rise up to be added to legal download sites (hopefully without the games biting anyone along the way).

In 1982, Disney took a bold risk with the release of the movie Tron, a film set largely inside a fictional world in the computer and made largely with CGI. It was different and new and at the time the movie didn't get a huge box office reception. However the legacy of that movie, and of the arcade games it spawned, have influenced the world at large, and game and computer programmers in particular, for years to come.

While developer Monolith released Tron 2.0 in 2003 for PC owners as a sequel to the movie, Disney decided later to create a true movie sequel in Tron Legacy which is due in theaters on December 17. On December 7, Disney Interactive and developer Propaganda Games will release Tron Evolution for the PC and other platforms. This action-adventure game serves as a prequel to the new movie. Big Download got one of the game's designers Dan Bourdage to give us some more info on the game including some PC specific features.

A few days ago we reported that a countdown had begun for Space Paranoids Online, a web-based version of the game that was shown in the original Tron movie. Now that site has officially gone live. The game, which uses the Unity web game engine, puts you in a tank to shoot other enemy tanks and Recognizers.

The game, which is a promotion for the upcoming Tron movie sequel Tron Legacy, is quite fun as you pilot the tank in first person mode through a series of maze levels. Your tank has only a limited amount of shots before it has to recharge at several stations in the maze. Of course all the high scores of the game are for Flynn, the Jeff Bridges character in both movies.

As expected months ago, there's a new Tron game in development and it looks like we will get our very first good look at the movie-based title during Spike TV's Video Game Awards on December 12. However, GameTrailers.com has a few seconds of teaser footage that you can check out after the jump.

It's pretty likely that the game will be out in 2011 around the time the 1982 movie's long awaited sequel Tron Legacy is due in theaters. It's also likely that Disney Interactive is handling the publishing duties as well. But who is the developer of the game? And will it make us forget the pretty solid Tron 2.0 game that Monolith released just a few years ago? We will have to wait and see.

GoGamer.com is one of the best retail web sites to get huge deals on boxed PC games. They have just launched a new 48 Hour Madness sale and as usual it's packed with both older and more recent PC games with their prices cut to the bone.

Among the games on sale is Tron 2.0 for a tiny $1.90, Scarface: The World is Yours for just $4.90, FlatOut 2 for a minuscule $2.90 and the more recent PC port of Mass Effect for just $9.90. All of these prices are valid until 3 am ET on Tuesday at GoGamer.com so if you are at all interested you might want to move quickly.

Disney's original Tron movie not only was an influential film it also spawned a number of arcade games that are remembered to this day. In 2003, developer Monolith created Tron 2.0, a solid action game that was basically a sequel to the movie's storyline.

Now Disney is planning to make a true movie sequel, which has the odd ttitle TR2N, and according to Variety (via unnamed sources) its Disney Interactive division is naturally planning to have a game that will tie into the movie sequel. The movie itself will bring back some of the original movie's actors like Jeff Bridges and Tron himself Bruce Boxleitner (Boxleitner also voiced his character for Tron 2.0). With the movie not due for rlease until 2011 any game will likely have a lot more development time than other movie-based titles.