Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Nick's Tron Legacy Pinball Impressions



Hey folks, this is my final Tron Legacy Pinball video. I took all of the footage of the game in action and some extra shots I took of the playfield without the glass on it. If you saw the Rolling Stones video, it's pretty much the same thing. Just five minutes of gameplay and what I thought of the game.


Just like with every pinball table it's next to impossible to review it. As Harry Williams said "The ball is wild." so every machine is random. Their all built by hand so the Tron at Reciprocal Skateboards is going to play different from the Tron machine you might find at an arcade or pub. What I can say is that it feels like a very fast version of FunHouse. FunHouse had four things at the top of the playfield that could stop the ball, but on Tron there isn't any.

The game's software is still early. From rumors I've heard their adding in a video mode and the Limited Edition version is supposed to have even more features the "Pro" model doesn't have. The game is pretty basic. Try to collect the lit Light Cycles to start the Light Cycle Multiball, shoot the Quorra Lane for Qyorra Multiball, hit the middle for Disc War Multiball and you can start other modes via the Flynn's Arcade Scoop. The Arcade Scoop only has a few awards, so hopefully in updates you can earn more from collecting the arcade.

The game also has two skill shots. The first one is a lot harder then it looks, you have to lightly plunge the ball to try to make it into the Flynn's Arcade Scoop. If you can do it you'll get half a million and the Flynn's Arcade Award. It's a lot harder then it looks. There's also a second kind of hidden skill shot that's worth 300,000 points. If you hold the left flipper and plunge the ball hard it will go around the table and you can try to make the right loop with the left flipper. It's easier to hit then the Arcade shot, but I had the ball stop and roll into the bumpers on a few attempts, so be ready if the ball doesn't make it all the way around.

Since I was playing a game in tournament settings it's hard to say what I'd like to see changed as far as game rules go. Since it took 14 shots to start Disc Multiball I can't comment on that and how many points it awards. What I would have liked to have heard more of would be Daft Punk's amazing music they did for the movie. Sadly they only have three songs, the main title, Derezzed and a third song (I think it's Fall) the rest are other songs that kind of sound like Daft Punk. I wish they could have gotten more. The other thing I'd like more of is custom speech. The main narrator of the game is the female voice that gives you instructions like "Battle Rinzler for Disc War Multiball" but other then that none of the actors from the film have any custom lines. Hopefully with future upgrades they'll add them on. Like how they got the actor that plays JJ in Spider-Man. He really brought that game to life. It gets old quick hearing the same lines from Jeff Bridges over and over again. I doubt they'd get him to do lines, but if they could get the guy who played Castor/Zeus to do some custom lines that'd be amazing.

So I'm really looking forward to what the future holds for Tron Legacy. Other then the theme I really enjoy the game. A lot more then Stern's previous tables. It's well worth checking out. So if you see one in your travels be sure to give it some love!

2 comments:

  1. Nick,
    Thanks for the videos of the LE. Looking forward to Pinballz Arcade in Austin, TX getting theirs!

    In case you wanted to see more detail and impressions of what I and couple other pinheads came up with for an estimation of rule set (of the Pro version 1.4 I believe), see the link.

    http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pinball/browse_thread/thread/6af709c345028983/0de854bf51966e5d?lnk=gst&q=tron+rules#0de854bf51966e5d

    Did the LE version fix the "bug" (at least IMHO) of the right orbit post coming up whenever you have super bumpers, even when you have a timed CLU shot lit?

    -Colin

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  2. Whoops, thought this vid was a different one I've seen on Youtube of the LE. This one here is the Pro.

    Question still stands on the LE if you happen to know the answer.


    -Colin

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