Of all the ‘80s movie series to get a modern-day revival, Tron might be the most baffling. Its sucked-into-the-game plot and groundbreaking but endearingly dorky visual design feel extremely of their time, and after the first film, decades passed without a sequel despite its positive reception. But after 2010’s excellent Tron: Legacy, followed by another long gap, Tron is set to get two video game releases and a film sequel in the span of just over two years.
In 2023, Bithell Games released Tron: Identity, a visual novel following a detective program named Query investigating a crime in the digital city known as the Arq Grid. While it includes plenty of nods to both the original film and Tron: Legacy, Identity can be played as a total standalone, though players with at least a passing familiarity with the computerized world of the series are likely to get more out of it. This summer, the game gets a sequel of its own in Tron: Catalyst, and from the hour-long preview I’ve played, that same dynamic seems to be intact.
