Another version of the simple action game is modeled after the light cycle sequence of the movie Tron.

This has been the tagline of Armagetron since, well, a very long time and is probably the shortest and most accurate description possible. Tron was an arcade game based on a movie of the same name, released by Disney in 1982. The original game consisted of 4 sub-games; the only one of concern is the 'Light Cycles' one, in which the player uses a left/right joystick to control a 'Light Cycle,' which leaves a wall behind it wherever the cycle it goes, turning only at 90-degree angles. The player must then get the AI to crash into their wall while avoiding hitting the AI's wall themselves. Those were the humble beginnings of Armagetron Advanced's game play, which has now blossomed into 16-player mayhem, with highly advanced AI, network game play, and of course, all in a 3D environment.

Armagetron Advanced is the continuation of Manual Moos' alias, z-man's original game, Armagetron. The project was officially registered on June 2, 2004, but had its findings a month or two earlier, amid growing discontentment with several minor, fixable bugs. Tank Program started work on fixing some of them, and a little-known special release, version 0.2.6.0-TP, was made public. While it was never successful, the fact that builds could be made for Windows and the presence of qualified C++ programmers spurred us onwards to creating the SourceForge project and releasing 0.2.7.0. When almost all hope of ever seeing z-man again was lost, he miraculously returned to the Armagetron scene and has been with us since. We're now the official continuation of Armagetron, and things are rolling smoothly.