Because of this, I decided to look back at some older games. A few leapt out at me as having been critically well-received but not commercially successful, which seemed like a good recipe for conversation. One in particular I had played and greatly enjoyed when it came out over 10 years ago. That game was Tron 2.0
Relased in 2003 by Monolith Productions, Tron 2.0 was actually the official sequel to Tron until Tron: Legacy came along and shoved it aside. I haven't gotten very far into replaying it, but based on my memories of it Tron 2.0 is more successful in recapturing the feel of the original movie.
Being an older game, Tron 2.0 does suffer from the resolution issue that is common among games from that long ago. Happily there are a pair of unofficial patches that, between the two of them, allow higher widescreen resolutions, fix a few bugs in the base game, and apply a number of improvements from the console release of the game. Those files can be found at the Tron 2.0 news site. The important ones here are:
The YouTube video I've embedded goes through the process of installing Tron 2.0 in Steam and getting it patched up. If you have any problems, they'll almost certainly be covered in there. There's also an excellent guide posted in the Steam forums for the game. The basic procedure is as follows:
- Install Tron 2.0 from Steam and run it once. You might run into an issue where the Tron game launcher goes into an endless loop; if this happens you can try:
- Running the TronLauncher.exe directly as administrator
- Running Steam as administrator
- Replacing the TronLauncher.exe file with a modified version
- Install the Unofficial 1.042 patch
- Install the Killer App mod
Once you've done that, you should be good to go. It's a little bit of extra work on the front end, but it really is worth it. If you run into problems, feel free to let me know here and I'll try and give you advice or point you to someone who can help.