Every year, Comic Con comes to the San Diego Convention Center and with that comes over 3 miles of showroom floor. Celebrity signings, costumed fanatics, free giveaways, giant, oversized bags all take over the landscape of the generously sized convention. However, the highlight of my trip took place about 4 blocks away right in the middle of downtown San Diego.

In support of this years TRON: Legacy release, out December, Disney pulled out all the stops and recreated one of the more recognizable locations from the original film, Flynn's Arcade. Built inside of an abandoned segment of 6th Ave. downtown, Flynn's Arcade had all the charms of the original brick and mortar from the 1984 release , despite the warranted advertisements and press that an event like this would garner. Still, being inside the arcade was incredible. All the original machines were there, including movie stand outs Space Paranoids and the elusive TRON. And the best part… ALL THE GAMES WERE FREE!!! No fishing for quarters, or dealing with imperfect dollar bills. Yes.

What I didn't realize, is that wasn't all Flynn had in store for us this time. Located behind the TRON encasement was a narrow corridor that wound and led deep into the building. One more corner, and there it was, in person. Flynn's personal desk and laser terminal. The attention to detail was impressive. The desk itself was a flat top LCD screen very similar to the technology used in the Original TRON for Dillinger's desk at ENCOM. The only difference here, lies in the message on the screen, which appeared to be a countdown of sorts. Most likely a countdown to the actual release of the film itself. The laser was an upgrade to the previous versions, but still crazy to see in person.

I kept walking down the next corridor, this one considerably brighter. A long hallway with strobing lights (made to look like you were being digitized) led into the most impressive room in the whole arcade.

In here I found an illuminated recreation of the world inside the MCP. Everything was luminescent and stunning. The beams glowed white and all the walls were made up of thousands of LED's. There was a glass bar with many intricately shaped bottles to the back of the room. Although there were no dj's at this time, they were playing the new Daft Punk score interspersed with showings of an exclusive Flynn's Arcade trailer of the film.

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