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Episode Studies by Clayton Barr

enik1138
-at-popapostle-dot-com
Tron: Battle Grids Battle Grids
Video Game
Published by Disney Interactive
Designed by Propaganda Games and N-Space
Released in December 2010

With hostility starting to brew between the Basic programs and the ISOs, Tron assists a particularly skilled ISO player to become an icon by becoming the first ISO champion of the Game Grid.

 

Story Summary

 

Since I don't own a copy of the game, a complete story summary is difficult to write but Wikipedia has a fairly complete plot synopsis:


Smallwikipedialogo.png This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original story summary was at Tron: Evolution - Battle Grids. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

 

The game starts with Your Program battling Quorra with light cycles. The Program wins and goes to Tron City where he/she meets Quorra. The Program and Quorra become friends. Quorra finds Zuse who takes them to Tron's palace to find a trainer for the Program. They meet with Tron, and he fights your program to see if he/she is championship material. Afterwards, he tells your program that if he/she wins the championship he/she would be the first ISO champion. This could give ISOs someone to look up to.

 

You then train with Calchas for the upcoming matches. After a few training sessions you go through an official match. One of Calchas' trainees, angry that he was not chosen to participate, challenges your program. Your program wins, and Quorra then suggests that you head for the next match by light cycles. On your way you are attacked by a grid bug. Both your program and Quorra fall off the track, and are attacked by a swarm of grid bugs. You wake up in a colony, where a Survivalist named Gibson has taken you. He informs your program of how he saved you both. On deciding to leave, Gibson says you must repay him, because he sacrificed valuable resources to save you. You agreed to compete in multiple games; once you've won Gibson will allow you to leave and return to Tron City.

 

When your program and Quorra get back to Tron City, it is already time to begin the Light Tank battle against Bosh. Your program wins, but then you find out that Calchas was in a Light Cycle Race against Blaze, which results in Calchas being derezzed by Blaze. You then go to Tron's Palace and tell Tron the bad news. When they both return to Tron City, they find out that Quorra had been kidnapped and Blaze has threatened and hinted that if your program participated in the final match, she would possibly be derezzed.

 

Then Gibson, who had come to watch the Tournament, tells you that he saw where both Bosh and his henchmen drag her away to, so your program battled his/her way through the Elite Guards, across the Light Sail Station to Bosh, derezzed him and saved Quorra. Then both your program and Quorra hurried to the final event just in time, which was a Light Cycle battle against Blaze. Your program won, and after Blaze attempts and fails to derezz your program, the user Kevin Flynn himself gave the trophy to the First ISO Champion of the Grid Games.

 

 

 

 

Didja Know?

 

Battle Grids is a mostly arena-styled video game released on December 7, 2010, simultaneously with Tron: Evolution, to which it is a prequel story. Battle Grids was released only for the Nintendo Wii and DS game systems. The game features both single and multiplayer modes.

 

Bruce Boxleitner returns as Tron and Olivia Wilde voices Quorra, whom she also plays in Evolution, "Isolated" and Legacy.

 

Didja Notice?

 

The main city of the system is called TRON City. Details of the existence of TRON City and the new system are fleshed out in the following video game, Tron: Evolution.


According to the Tron Wiki, the population of TRON City in 1989 was 16,453,479. Wow, that's a lot of programs!

The story reveals that the former game champion, Tron, has retired from the games on the Grid. Presumably this was to devote more time as the system's protector.

This prequel story introduces the ISO Quorra to the Tron universe.

The player plays against a number of characters in training or championship matches, even Tron and Flynn!

The character of Bosh may have been named after the computer term BOSH (Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP), a method of synchronous two-way communication between two computer systems via HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

Bosh insultingly refers to the ISO game player as "little sprite". In computer terminology, a sprite is a pre-rendered two-dimensional figure that is displayed over a larger image on the screen.

Quorra uses the insult "bit-brain". "Bit" being the most basic unit of information in computing.

The character of Zuse was named after computer engineering pioneer, Konrad Zuse (1910-1995). Zuse will later assume the new identity of Castor (as seen in Legacy) after the events of Evolution.

The game reveals that an alternate term for "identity disc" is "light disc".

The video game seems to imply that Tron lives in a palace.

A place of business called Flynn's is seen near the training arena in Tron City.

The ring game from the original Tron, played on light rings with a ball and cesta, was never really named in the film. Here, it is referred to as Hyperball (although the game is modified from standing on rings to moving hexagonal platforms).

A character named Gibson appears as game player. He also appears later in Evolution.

A two-person vehicle called a light runner is introduced in this game.

Much more information about the people, places, and things of Battle Grids can found at the Tron Wiki.

Memorable Dialog

the gaming grids.wav
up for grabs.wav
the future grid games champion.wav
bit-brain.wav
don't get comfortable, program.wav
you look out of date, program.wav

 

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