Tron 2.0

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

TRON 2.0 is a video game developed by Monolith Productions and released in 2003.

It is a sequel to the 1982 movie Tron; the player takes the role of Jethro "Jet" Bradley, son of the film's characters Alan and Lora. Jet is swiftly summoned into the digital world of Encom's computer network to protect it, his father, and the secrets of the digitizer technology from both a mysteriously powerful virus corrupting everything in its path and a group of Corrupt Corporate Executives from the company Future Control Industries ("fCon") staging a hostile takeover.

Not to be confused with Tron: Legacy, the 2010 movie sequel to TRON. Particularly since the two sequels are mutually exclusive, and Word of God makes the film the official continuity.

Tropes used in Tron 2.0 include:
  • Action Girl: Mercury
  • Advancing Wall of Doom: The system reformat.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted strangely enough, considering it was such a big theme in the movies. Most of the Programs are there to do their jobs. It's the invading humans that cause problems.
  • Alternate Continuity: From Tron: Legacy, as the two feature different and incompatible accounts of how the digitizer technology was developed in the decades since the events of TRON. There is also a character who is dead in one and still alive in the other.
    • There are some pretty shocking similarities, though, such as Kevin Flynn vanishing under mysterious circumstances (per the Ghost in the Machine spin-off comic) and Tron himself going MIA. Probably the most shocking one is that the plot of the game actually involves something called the "Tron Legacy Code", though nothing like it appears in the film sequel.
      • Not to mention the leads in each canon are the sons of the original Tron's leads, who meet a female program who's been influenced or sent to help by the lead's father
  • Ancient Keeper: I-No, Tower Guardian of the old Encom mainframe. Terribly friendly sort, too. Chooses to die with his system, sadly.
  • Bar Brawl: Jet and Ma3a head to the Progress Bar to get the Legacy code compiled and contact "Guest." Just when it's looking like everything's going to turn out ok, "Guest" warns Jet about the bad code too late to do anything about it, and Thorne crashes the party with a horde of Z-Lots.
  • Body Horror: When Alan removes the correction algorithms to check them, fCon higher-ups Bazra, Popoff, and Crowne are merged together into the final boss upon digitizing.
  • Brain Uploading: Ma3a straddles the lines of Brain Uploading, Virtual Ghost, and Interface with a Familiar Face. Ma3a's previous builds (Ma1a and Ma2a) were designed by Alan and Lora. Lora was killed by being partly digitized by her laser. Alan used code from Ma2a and the part of Lora that remained in the system to construct Ma3a - this is why she's voiced by Cindy Morgan, the actress who played Lora (and her virtual doppelganger Yori) in the first film.
  • Call a Hit Point a Smeerp: They aren't keys, they're permissions.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Disney declared the events of TRON 2.0 not canon when Tron: Legacy was released.
  • Check Point Starvation: The game only autosaves at the start of a level, no matter how large said level is. Worse, you cannot save during the lightcycle matches at all.
    • On the other hand, if you have installed the patch, you can simply skip the lightcycle matches, and you can manually save at any time (except during lightcycle matches, of course).
  • Clear My Name: Jet is mistaken for the cause of the viral corruption by Encom's chief security program, the Kernel, and a Stern Chase ensues for the first few acts of the game.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Every faction gets its own color, the red and blue of the original film being supplemented with green for infected, viral programs and sectors, gold for really ancient systems, and purple for the Big Bad.
  • Come with Me If You Want to Live: Mercury blasts her way out of the lightcycle arena and orders Jet to follow her. At that point, Jet only knows her as an opponent and current champion of the Game Grid.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In lightcycle races, computer-controlled opponents manage to pull off turns that are obviously impossible for human reaction to repeat. May or may not cross into Fridge Brilliance if you realize that they have the in-game advantage of not being human over the player.
  • Contemplate Our Navels: Byte as the reformat wall approaches.
  • Cool Bike: TRON 2.0 has its own updated version of the lightcycles (designed by Syd Mead).
  • Corrupted Data: Encountered all over the place. Virus-infected Z-Lots will have garbled names. Attacking with a certain weapon will cause the Program to convulse and stammer error messages. If a virus infects Jet's Profiler subroutine, then the input for enemy names and stats are garbled. Considering the universe we're dealing with, all of it is perfectly Justified.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive : If you thought Dillinger from the first film was bad, the F-Con crew are worse.
    • It is hinted that fCon's CEO is actually Dillinger.
  • The Corruption: Thorne becomes a living version of this, infecting other Programs to turn them into insane Z-lots. Jet is able to use weapons originating from the corruption without suffering ill effect. Fridge Brilliance when you realize he's an uncorrupted User, and not subject to the usual system guidelines.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: Early on, Jet managed to plow through several waves of security units. But when a cutscene takes him directly to the Kernel's office, he surrenders without a fight
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: In-game, Mercury barely helps out, but when Jet's freed Ma3a and they're about to escape, she is shown fending off about five Z-lots in melee combat in a You Shall Not Pass moment.
  • Deadly Disc: One of your weapons is an identity disc.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Byte.
  • Dying as Yourself: Thorne; he even helps out the good guys with some information before he goes.
  • Escort Mission: Through the last quarter of the game, you're escorting your father through F-Con's network. Not as bad as the ProtectionMissions because he has the good sense to duck or otherwise take cover when discs start flying.
  • Explosive Overclocking: Literally done. This is the TRON universe, after all. Jet overclocks an old Encom mainframe to upload Ma3a to it, getting her out of immediate danger. Unfortunately, the overclocking tears the old system apart, forcing him and Ma3a to retreat to the open Internet.
  • Exposition Fairy: Byte and Ma3a take turns on this one.
  • Face Heel Turn: Ma3a and, in a sense, Tron; the "Tron Legacy" (no relation) code Jet tries to find to fight fCon turns out to be designed to Kill All Users -- as he finds out just after Ma3a assimilates the code.
  • Floating Platforms
  • Follow the Leader: While it's certainly an original game, it uses many of the same gameplay elements as Half Life.
  • The Glasses Come Off: Jet wears glasses in the analog world. They vanish once he hits Cyberspace. Same thing happens when his dad is zapped in.
  • A God Am I: Thorne. He later realizes he's nothing.
  • Going Down with the Ship
    • Or "server" in the case of I-No.
    • Discussed then averted with Alan and Jet when they decide to crash F-Con's server from the inside.
  • Gratuitous French: Eva Popoff.
  • Grid Inventory: Jet has a varying amount of space available in each level to load power-up programs. Alpha-grade programs take up four times as much space as the gold versions of the same power-up -- and if all you have are one-slot inventory spaces available, you're in trouble.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Mercury, though she "gets better"...sort of.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: The trio of bad guys wanted to digitize humans to infiltrate all corners of cyberspace. At the end they're digitized, and turned into cyberspace Eldrich Abominations. Jet defeats them and Alan traps them on a hard disk.
  • Honorary Uncle: The in-game emails reveals that Kevin Flynn is Jet's godfather, and the spin-off comic has Jet talking about "Uncle Kevin's" cyberspace misadventures.
  • Inhuman Resources : Dr. Eva Popoff makes Dillinger look reasonable.
  • Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Nice going, F-Con thugs. You lock Alan freaking Bradley in a closet full of spare computer equipment. That can't backfire on you...
  • Lost in Transmission: Oh, Users. For three-quarters of the game, Jet's instructions from "Guest" and Ma3a are incomplete, full of static, cryptic, incorrect, or all of the above.
  • Magnet Hands: You can perform all sorts of acrobatic tricks and still catch your disk without fail!
  • Mini Game: The light cycle races, which also tend to be Nintendo Hard. Later versions of the game allow you to skip the ones in the main game, and there is also a non-story-based light cycle game mode you can play any time.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • One of the techs asks Jet if he could have some of Alan's popcorn, as Roy did with Alan in the original film.
    • One of the guards snarks that he's seen "compound interest Programs fight better," an indirect reference to Crom.
  • Nerds Are Sexy: Even outside of cyberspace, Jet is quite good looking. His dad didn't age so badly, either.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • Jet compiling the Tron Legacy code. Alan thought that it would be safe to compile since he thought there were no humans in the system. Once he found out Jet was in the system, he desperately tried to tell Jet not to compile it. Too late.
    • A very delayed case: The old mainframe is populated with tanks that cannot be deactivated or destroyed, forcing Jet to run the proverbial gauntlet. Flynn left them behind in the system...Nice freakin' going, "Uncle Kevin!"
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: F-Con decides to test their laser by zapping Alan in, which reunites him with his son and Ma3a. Now, seeing as this is the guy who programmed the biggest Badass in cyberspace history...
  • Ninja: fCon's Datawraiths are all-but-literally computer ninja -- digitized hackers able to infiltrate any system, and appear and disappear with virtually no warning to attack the player. In fact, their animations are almost entirely copied from the ninjas in No One Lives Forever 2.
  • Nintendo Hard: Like Metroid Prime, TRON 2.0 can be described as a first person platformer with shooting. Unlike Metroid Prime, the jump distances are hard to control, often landing you in the Bottomless Pit over and over. And you can't fall as far as you can in many other games before hitting the ground becomes instant death.
    • Also, even on Normal mode a group of ICP can kill you in seconds. Combine this with the jumping puzzles and the dodgy disk mechanic and you really should just turn on God Mode and enjoy the Scenery Porn. The jumping puzzles will still kill you more than most other game's enemies.
    • This is without even mentioning that there is no autosave. No joke, you have to rely on the quicksave function a LOT. Yes, this is lampshaded by one character, but he refers to it as "autosaving". Further inexcusable considering that one of Monolith's previous FPS titles, Alien Vs Predator 2 actually DID use an autosave function.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Every level has bottomless pits. None of them have railings.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: In this continuity, it took 20 years to fully recreate the digitizer technology because only the MCP knew how to make the corrections needed to allow humans to enter the Grid intact.
    • Emails suggest, however, that the developers were unaware of this fact and that they did not know that the digitizing laser only worked because the MCP was tweaking the incoming data.
  • Oh Crap: Jet when he receives the warning from "Guest" not to compile the Tron Legacy code as it's happening.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname:
    • "Jet" is short for "Jethro." We only see this in the in-game email.
    • Subversion with Mercury's User. She only knows him as "Guest." Turns out, Guest is Alan, using a game console and spare parts to hack into the system!
  • Powers as Programs: The only thing always available are the "basics": the disc, the rod, the ball, and the mesh. All their other iterations (they have two additional versions each) are loaded as programs in Jet's "memory allocation" on the server he's on, along with the additional powers, such as increasing jump height, silent running, and so on. Virus-type enemies can infect programs to reverse their effects (the silent running program makes Jet's footsteps louder, for example), and all programs have an alpha, beta, and gold level. Alpha is the least effective (or the most costly in terms of energy) and takes up the most space in memory (four contiguous blocks), beta is more effective (or less costly) and takes up two blocks, and gold is the most effective (or least costly) and only takes up one block. While there are beta versions of programs that can be found while exploring, you can only get gold versions by "feeding" the program to a code optimizer. Of which there are a limited number, and which can only be used once each.
  • Protection Mission: Two of them, both guarding Ma3a. The first one is where she needs to be protected from hostile security programs while she tries to override the server's security. The second is a Bar Brawl where Thorne and his Z-Lots try to kill her and you have to fend them off long enough for her to compile some code.
  • Punny Name: I-No. Justified as he is an information retrieval Program.
    • The leader of all the security programs is, of course, their Kernel.
  • Recursive Canon: The TRON arcade game from the 1980s appears; the explanation is that Kevin Flynn created a game based on his adventures in the film, which was later published by Encom. The same explanation was recycled for Tron: Legacy.
  • RPG Elements: Before they were widely popular. The player can gather points throughout the game that can be used to "upgrade" Jet's basic characteristics (life meter, energy meter, etc.).
  • Save Scumming: Lampshaded by an NPC:

"I'm auto-saving every 30 seconds. I suggest you do the same."

  • Scenery Porn: Watching the TRON universe is one thing; interacting with it is another thing altogether.
  • Sexy Backless Outfit: Mercury, and the game spends much of her time showing it off.
  • Shout-Out:
    • TRON 2.0 has several little references to the first film, such as the popcorn machine.
    • Jet is playing the original TRON Arcade game in the opening.
    • There's a Shout Out to Marathon: "Frog blast the vent core!"
      • Among the infected program enemies you can spot ones named Durandal and Rampancy.
    • When Alan is sent to the system, he looks like he's borrowed Tron's clothing -- and looks rather ridiculous in it.
    • When Jet is traveling through the old mainframe, the "Reindeer Flotilla" password from the film activates a battalion of tanks.
  • Sickly Green Glow: The corruption.
  • Stat-O-Vision: The "Profiler" subroutine.
  • Stealth Pun: Oh my GOD, they're everywhere. Covering all of them would require an entire page. Let's start with the names of some programs.
    • Ordinary NPCs are given ordinary names, such as "Brian.exe". The security programs, Intrusion Countermeasure Programs, are given names like "svchost.exe" and "spoolsv.exe". There are enemies called "Resource Hogs" which are given distorted names of real programs such as "reelplayer.exe", "inlook.exe", "screensaver.exe" and "exploder.exe". Virus programs called "Z-Lots" who are spawned by "Rector Scripts" also exist.
    • ICPs run after you with identity disks alight shouting such gems as, "Freeze, Program!", "You can't hide from me--I know all the shortcuts", "Quit running!", and "Stop executing escape routine!".
    • There's an ICP who laments the approaching reformat because he lost all his updates the last time it happened. His buddy replies, "You'd lose your header if it wasn't compiled on."
    • And finally, your weapons and sub-routines are named normally enough, but they couldn't help but sneak in a subroutine called "Megahurtz" that increases weapon damage and name your sniper rifle the "LOL".
  • Story Breadcrumbs: The in-game emails and video archives Jet finds tell most of the story of what happened between the events of the film and the events of the game, or what's going on in the analog world while Jet's fighting through Cyberspace.
  • Swiss Army Weapon: Four of them! The Disc, Rod, Mesh and Ball primitives each have several different forms, on top of the use of the Rod for lightcycles;
  • Take That: The names of the Resource Hog type enemies include many thinly-veiled references to real-world applications, such as image_shop.exe, morton_disk_scan.exe and netscope.exe.
  • Technology Porn: Not quite at the level of the movies, but still enough to make the nerds Squee.
  • Terrible Trio: Crown (the sociopath), Popoff (the psychotic), and Baza (the coward)
  • Totally Radical: The DJ, naturally. Daft Punk, he's not.
  • Trapped in Another World: Just like the films, no protagonist takes their first trip into Cyberspace willingly.
  • The Unfought: Thorne, played up as the game's main Big Bad on the box. When you finally reach him, the Kernel has nearly defeated him, and he derezzes soon after you beat the Kernel.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Kill any civilian program or ally, and your game immediately ends with "This Program has performed an illegal operation."
  • The Virus: Thorne, the original Big Bad; attempting to digitize himself without Alan and Lora's correction algorithms left him as Patient Zero of the virus corrupting Encom's network.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's heavily implied that Lora's death put a huge wedge between Jet and Alan. Alan even grumbles during the game's intro that Jet is "as bad as Flynn." It's obvious that they do love one another, but there's not a lot of understanding on the part of either party.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: What about the mysterious leader of fCon? The developers once said that it would have been Dillinger, the human villain of the original movie (supported by an email where the CEO claims he "lost this company once before").

End Of Line.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Tron_2.0?oldid=1724381"