Pick Date: 9/19/11    Fire up the light cycles, because one of my few remaining grails has finally arrived in the Vintage Vault Arcade.

grail   -noun   1. the object of an extended or difficult quest.

My dad took me to see the original Tron movie in 1982. I was an immediate fan, being that I was a computer geek as a kid. Flash forward to the second Tron movie, Tron legacy, and of course I dragged my wife to see it in 3D in the theaters. The movie stoked my interest in owning a Tron arcade game again.

Of course I thought I was going to have to wait for years before prices came down again, but I managed to snatch this little beauty right up. This my friends, is as close to a HUO arcade game as I have ever been. What's that? Don't know what HUO is?

HUO   -noun   1. Home Use Only.

So I now own a HUO Tron... at least it was HUO for the last 20 years. It spent 9 years on location. That my friends, means I have a really, really nice Tron without all the battlescars that 30 years in an arcade and/or warehouse can do to a game. Now... on to how I came about this little gem.

So I bought this from a really old man, whose 2 twenty something grandaughters were there. They all told me the game has sat in the corner of their non-windowed basement for the last 20 years. Basically, when it came into the basement, it went into a finished corner and never moved from that spot. So that is why it is HUO for 20 years.

After I got the game home, I gave it the once over to see what, if any, work needed to be done. When the game was on location, the stick was replaced with a black one and there are a few very minor scrapes in the side art. When it was sold to the old guy, the seller put in a freeplay button. They had long lost the keys and the sound was soft and scratchy which was mentioned in the ad. After I got the doors open, tweaking the sound pot clear up the sound right away. I replaced the stick with a repro from Groovy Gear (perfect BTW) and replaced the black lights. The inner sticker art being in that basement with no sunlight for that long glows really nicely under the blacklight.

This Tron game needed a spot of honor in my gameroom, being mostly HUO, absolutely beautiful, the only game I have with a blacklight, and spawned from a really cool movie. I moved it into the spot my Terminator 2 held in the center of the room by the bar. I then moved the Terminator 2 and Stun Runner games around to make everything fit. I finally have it all. Tron and HUO. This is a proud day for the Vintage Vault Arcade. Enough writing, I need to play a few more light cycle battles.

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