"Tron Deadly Discs" for the Mattel Aquarius Computer

This video is "Tron Deadly Discs" for the Mattel Electronics Aquarius computer. This is one of my least favorite Mattel developed games. They could have put more effort into the appearance, but that's small compared to the missing Recognizers. Where did they go? It gets boring running around "derezzing" the bad guys all the time. I do like Tron's shield, though. Also, the use of the AY sound chip is appreciated, unlike NightStalker and AD&D, though a sample of the Tron theme song would have been nice.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Tron
• Aquarius computer
• Mattel Electronics
• Intellivision
• INTV
• ECS
• Intellivoice
• deadly discs
• Atari
• Coleco
• Commodore

[IrishEyedBlue]

I used to have an Aquarius and I had this game. I also had Snafu, Utopia, and Astrosmash. My dad bought it off of my uncle and gave it to me. Unfortunately I never played the games. It just sat there and never was used again. I eventually sold it. Maybe I wasn't missing out on much. perhaps?

[MattelAquarius]

It's too bad you never played the games. Although Tron is probably the weakest game Mattel made for the Aquarius, the games you had were quite solid and fun.

[lurkerrekrul]

The reason this version sucks is that the Aquarius had no game-related hardware at all. It didn't have sprites and the character set couldn't even be reprogrammed.

I've read that most Mattel programmers considered being assigned to work on Aquarius games to be a form of punishment.

[MattelAquarius]

I share the sentiment. However, despite the lack of programmable graphics, it really would have been quite simple to construct the Recognizer using the Aquarius graphics set. See my other videos for examples of what could be accomplished using the limited Aquarius character set. There is also no excuse for not including a snippet of the Tron song, to which Mattel had the licensed rights.

The "punishment" comment is well documented at the Blue Sky Rangers website. It was the artists.

[IrishEyedBlue]

Yeah so I've heard. :) the other problem was that I needed a TV that could play old game/computer systems like the Aquarius. I have the same problem trying to get my Super Nintendo to work on my TV. I'm sure there are ways though as I've seen someone use an NES on an HDTV.

[sinistermoon]

Haha wow it looks no where near as good as the Intellivision version. But it still has more of a background than the Atari 2600 version. Awesome video.

[Darrylb500]

Pretty dumb to leave the Recognizers out of this, think they did that on the 2600 version too. Ho hum...

[lurkerrekrul]

I hope that was sarcasm. :)

The Atari and Intellivision versions came out in 1982 and they both run rings around this version.

[dorkydorkone]

Impressive for 1982.