Fall 2013 Blog Entry #9

Greetings, programs! On Sunday afternoon last week, I was playing an online game called Space Paranoids. It is based on the fictional arcade video game created by Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) from the 1982 Disney cult-classic film TRON, which spawned in a 2010 sequel TRON: Legacy and last year's short-lived Disney XD animated TV series TRON: Uprising. I began playing this since I was at Oakton High School during my post-graduate year, usually during free time at a computer class.

In case the computer artists haven't noticed, I like the vintage style of the graphics in Space Paranoids, which in retrospect is how computer animation was like before it was officially used in the mid-1990s (see Disney/Pixar's Toy Story of 1995). After all, TRON is set in the 1980s, hence the outdated look at the CGI-animation before what we have right now.

This online game has 15 levels and allows one or two players to enter the game via hitting the C (continue game) or N (new game) on the keyboard. To move the Game Tank's cannon around is through the computer mouse while using the arrow keys helps it move, whereas hitting the space bar allows the tank to revolve around in a straight formation. Clicking the mouse 3 times would be to take down a flying Recognizer, clicking 2 times to fire at the enemy Game Tank, and clicking once on the laser post (HARDEST enemy to beat!) via sneak attack and proper target accuracy. The Game Tank only has 5 lives, making it challenging to keep it alive before it's GAME OVER should I lose all of them. On the right side is a map that displays the presence of the tank and the enemies (represented by red), as well as the yellow area that recharges the tank's ammo depending on the amount of the tank's time length over the "charging station."

If I recall the one time that we watched a video about the making of a popular video game during class while working, you might wonder how Space Paranoids was created to be the most addicting online game ever! Even though I used to successfully create the handmade online games at Oakton during every 7th period! Imagine what this game might be like if it was fully-animated an updated CGI-animation from TRON: Legacy, which came out in theaters 28 years after the 1st TRON. It's too bad I couldn't beat Flynn's high scores (his highest score is 999,000!). But as Flynn would say on how he finished the game at once... "It's all in the wrist!"