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VIRAL NEWS

Flynn's Arcade Exists? New Viral Game for Tron? Updated!

by Alex Billington
July 21, 2009

Wow something strange is going on out there. I woke up this morning to find a FedEx package from some address listed in San Diego called PMB. Inside the envelope were two arcade tokens (see above) for the once thought to be mythical Flynn's Arcade. Yep, the very same Flynn's that is the "Home of Tron" from the movie, uh, Tron. If I can put two-and-two together, a San Diego location this week might mean that Disney is doing a little Tron 2 viral marketing at Comic-Con. Sounds good to me! In addition to the tokens, there was also a thumb drive with an image labeled "4.gif" that is a coded animated gif. Check that out below.

So after doing some snooping around on the web, I also found out that JoBlo has an image like this as well, but with some different code (not the same stuff above). Some of the code in my image is gibberish - stuff I can't even understand. But on the JoBlo one they actually have some standard HTML code and numbers and so on. As I said, something very strange is going on. This viral is really starting to kick off and I hope we can figure this out before Comic-Con starts up. We'll keep you updated on the progress. It looks like we might have to put a bunch of pieces together and decipher the code? If anyone can help, let us know! Stay tuned!

Update: So far I've found the following other viral pieces across the web. From the comments below, we have gif #1, JoBlo has #3, UGO and SlashFilm have #2, I have #4, so we're still missing #5 maybe? Here are those four put together below (pattern goes 1,2,3,4). See anything? I can't make any sense of this code yet?

Tron Viral

Update #2: Over on MacHeist they deciphered the HTML code from the four gifs above as well as a fifth one from IGN. When the HTML is put together it creates a web page with a table in the middle containing letters and numbers to decipher the message below. When deciphered, it spells out "Flynn Lives." Awesome - but that can't just be it, can it? There might be more - something related to a countdown or location details at Comic-Con? Keep searching - and there might be some websites related to this as well. Have we tried flynnlives.com? Keep up to date in the comments. We'll let you know when hear more!

Update #3: Flynn Lives! The website is up and running at flynnlives.com. If you click the little bouncing spider thing at the bottom of the page, a countdown timer pops up (as seen above). We're guessing this counts down to the big event happening on Thursday night in San Diego. The timer counts down to 9:30PM on Thursday, July 23rd. There is a detailing about a "Flynn Lives" movement on the website as well with article clippings about Flynn. This is really starting to get good - an awesome ARG. Definitely check out the site - there seems to be a lot of good info on there! Let us know if you find anything else?

Update #4: The last site in this update (as far as we know) until Thursday night is homeoftron.com. This URL comes from the engraving on the arcade tokens that we first received. A quick glance around the site and it provides info on Flynn's old arcade from the original Tron movie but not much more. That's all for now folks - but of course let us know what you find! There may have more secrets - be on the lookout!

Explore tags: Comic-Con 09, Hype, Viral News

rapier

I received the package today. I don't know why as I'm not in the community even tangentially. Either way, the gif I received was #1. I've uploaded it to http://www.tyranny.com/tron2/1.gif I'll be trying to collect all the ones I've seen so far and placing them in that directory if anyone feels like trying to crack it.
rapier

I have more notes and partial translation of #3 at http://www.tyranny.com/tron2. From #3 you can guess that the 5 symbol tag is 'Table' and that sort of opens everything up. Also, you do have to overlay the images using the background as registration marks to get valid html. I haven't gotten to that point but right now its just a matter of tim.
http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/ Webomatica

If you look at the top of gif #4 at top, it's clearly the equivalent of html, head, and the good old style type="text/css" tag. So the chararcters are a substitution cipher for a really simple html file with a css style at top, and the bulk of the file contains a table. the part that's odd is at the bottom of #3 - looks like coordinates to an image map. and finally, I do believe there is another file out there as there doesn't seem to be an end html tag?
Miah

We figured this out over at MacHeist. http://tinyurl.com/n7a6qh It translates to "Flynn lives". Sort of anti-climatic, but m'eh.
jasonmd2020

Of all the films coming out, Tron 2 makes the most sense for a web viral.
http://www.dinpattern.com Evan

Has number 5 been found yet?
http://zbpros.com Brooks

It's html alright, it's several puzzles it says something like FLYNN LEVEL.
Squiggly

just doing some random domain attempts, I hit upon "encomentertainment.com", which was registered through godaddy via 'domains by proxy', which is a service used to hide registration information. Perhaps they wanted to hide the fact that it was registered by the studio? It was registered just months before the film was announced publicly - over a year and a half ago - and is still vacant. The latest 'update' to the domain was this month. Maybe another viral site that hasn't been put online yet? Just throwing that out there.
FYIBTW

The countdown from flynnlives.com now shows the following. Meet us at the cul de sac near the corner of 1st and J when the numbers run out. You’ll know who we are.
FYIBTW

One more thing. Has anyone put the high score from the homeoftron site into the table to see what comes out of it?
http://www.davecobb.com David C. Cobb

1st and J is a cul-de-sac directly across the street and train tracks from the convention center. Looks like we should be there tomorrow night at 9:30 View TRON 2 EVENT @ COMIC-CON in a larger map
veganboy

FLYNN LIVES!!! We were there at 1st and J… Where we were instructed to search for codes which were hidden around the Gas Lamp Quarter of San Diego with a supplied “Black Light” to reveal the coordinates of a special TRON event. The group of eight of us were able to quickly solve the puzzle and discovered, to our amazement, FLYNN’S ARCADE! When we entered the secret arcade, we found that it was an exact replica of the one featured in the special screening at Comic-Con from earlier that day! We all played the classic arcade games listening to cool tunes from the eighties until a certain song by Journey cued us to go the classic TRON arcade game… Next, the secret door behind the TRON game was revealed and we were led into the secret back room where we found an actual Tron Lightcycle from the new TRON movie… we were completely wowed and delighted!!! We left after given t-shirts and posters with hidden messaged to the countdown website… (clue: “slash derez”) …the actor who plays the son of Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) also showed up to say hi and we even saw Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) from Hero’s come by to see what was going on. Totally a cool night…Disney went way over the top with this!
Cesar

IDK how but I was just wondering around flynnlives.com and I ended up going here: http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx