From the start, it didn’t take long for many of us at Monolith to recognize that a TRON project was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not simply because we believed the film would lend itself to great gameplay, but also because of the movie’s status as a
cultural icon. As a high school student at the time of the original theatrical release, I remember it piquing my interest in computers and videogames. Whether at the time I fully realized the film’s impact or not, it certainly planted seeds that flourished later in my life. Since the start of the project, I’ve spoken to many people about TRON, and I repeatedly get the same kind of story: “It’s why I’m into computers,” “It’s why I’m into 3D graphics,” “It’s why I’m into gaming.” […]

We asked ourselves, what were the core elements that provided TRON with its unique identity? Not surprisingly, we immediately isolated the disc and light cycle as iconic elements from the movie and marked them as mandatory features for the game. However, once we started looking past the obvious, we were a taken aback by the sheer quantity of other essential TRON components. To compound the issue, it became evident that different people—meaning various people on the team, at BVG, in the press, and at TRON fan sites—all isolated different elements or events from the movie as true TRON moments. What began as a simple checklist became a forum of discussion that never really concluded until the completion of the game.