THE MAKING OF TRON

EVER WISHED YOU COULD BE IN LIKE FLYNN AND ENTER A VIDEOGAME? LEAD PROGRAMMER AND DESIGNER BILL ADAMS TELLS US ABOUT PUTTING ARCADE GOERS ON THE GAME GRID

- PAUL DRURY

A single phone call can change your life. For Bill Adams, a contractor at Honeywell, that call came in early 1979. "Employees used to sit at this long desk and the phones started ringing in turn," recalls Bill. "Everyone else was at lunch so didn't answer but when it got to my phone, I did pick up, and a guy asked if I was interested in getting into games. Bingo! I said I'd come and talk so I went to see him at a place called Bally Midway, which I'd never heard of..."

This kind of cold calling-cumheadhunting might seem like an unusual way to recruit staff but Bally Midway, previously associated with pinball and electro-mechanical coin-ops, could see the future was videogames - and videogames needed coders. Bill was immediately hired as a senior programmer and saw a rapid growth of Bally Midway's arcade division over the next few years, boosted by lucrative licences from Japan to distribute Space Invaders, Galaxian and Pac-Man in the West. The company did develop titles internally, too, and had success with Gorf and Wizard Of Wor, both created by a team led by Dave Nutting. So when Disney came calling in late-1981 about a film they had in production with a strong videogame theme, both Bill and Dave flew down to Hollywood to visit the studio. "Disney wanted as much promotion as they could for this movie, Tron," says Bill. "They showed us what they call 'dailies' [raw, unedited film footage] and gave us the script. It was fascinating. I'd never seen how they put a movie together!"