The Game: You are Tron, a lone video game warrior pitted against three other enemies with much greater armament. You can take a number of hits before you’re “de-rezzed” out of existence, but those hits can pile up pretty quickly. By throwing your disc at certain portions of the arena wall and changing them to the same color as your on-screen character, you can make tunnels for yourself – not unlike the side tunnels in Pac-Man – handy for escape or ambush. (M Network [Mattel], 1982)
Memories: Though it only corresponds to a very brief scene in the movie Tron, Deadly Discs is a very addictive game – and quite a bit of fun, actually!
Deadly Discs is also an interesting exercise in figuring out what constitutes window dressing in a video game. The Intellivision edition may have a 3-D grid, Recognizers, and other bells and whistles, but the VCS edition boils the game down to its basics – and manages to keep the fun factor intact.