When a mechanical arm at Parallax Computer Systems drops a software cartridge and inserts itself in its place, it creates a power surge that turns four programs into viruses: Megahert, the leader; Indexx, his advisor; Null, a lackey, and the uncontrollable Minus. The Parallax Computer responds by activating four Computer Warriors, Romm, Gridd, Micron, and Scanner. All eight ride on circuitboard gliders. The Computer Warriors chase the viruses into a telecomm port, and Romm believes the viruses neutralized in the explosion, but they have escaped into the material world and discovered the ability to convert household objects for their own use. Scanner discovers this and the Computer Warriors learn to do the same, capturing the viruses each on his own CD Rom. In a cliffhanger ending that was never resolved, the boy who owns the computer takes the discs to a friend with a better computer, with the Computer Warriors racing through the bitstream to get there first. Unsold pilot for Saturday morning cartoon show inspired by a Mattel toy line. A gang of computer viruses gains sentience and escapes into the real world on hovercraft. Computer A.I. assembles a team of Computer Warriors to bring them in. Only one episode of this was produced and aired as an infomercial in local markets. I had vague recollections of this and remembered it mostly because of short-lived toy line that accompanied it.<br/><br/>About a year ago I found out that this was written and produced by Carl Macek, the man behind bringing the series Robotech to the US, so I thought I'd track down a tape.<br/><br/>After seeing it again all these years later, I thought it made for a decent cartoon - something I would have liked to have seen when I was younger. It had some impressive CG for the time and while the story didn't have a lot of depth it delivered a lot of action.<br/><br/>Then, a few nights ago, I re-watched TRON and realized something: COMPUTER WARRIORS is nothing but a blatant rip-off of the concept. You've got good programs fighting bad programs, not to mention the main character's in COMPUTER WARRIORS is Romm, just like Rom from Tron.<br/><br/>There are way too many similarities for this to be coincidence. Had this gone to a series, I could have easily seen the Disney lawyers going after this one.
Dawreli replied
295 weeks ago