The History of the Vectrex

Matt Barton writes "Gamasutra is featuring an illustrated history of the Vectrex. The article goes in-depth on the development, specs, and impact of the unusual but innovative vector-based platform. We also discuss the modern Vectrex homebrew scene and collectors' market."

Comments

I love Vectrex

[Fricka]

My family got one of these right before they pulled production (or maybe during a clearance sale). At any rate we not only got MineStorm that came with it but then got a number of other games that went on sale later.

I can still hum the Minestorm "theme song" and say Spike's lines. When I first played "Spike", I remember thinking, "Wow, the video game talks!" and pointing it out to my Atari owning cousins.

Hmm, maybe I should rescue it from my parents' garage. As recently as five years ago it was still working and we still had the overlays for our games.

Re:How does vertex programming work?

[drinkypoo]

The difference between a raster monitor and a vector one is that the field coils on the raster are used to sweep the electron guns across the screen (to raster!) whereas in a vector scan monitor they are used to move the guns on paths between coordinates. In theory you could make any CRT into a vector display. I'm sure there's other differences in practice but I think that many of us at least have seen old-school televisions lose either their horizontal or vertical scan driver transistor, the result being a very bright vertical or horizontal line respectively.

Re:remarkable machine

[Lumpy]

color inkjet + color inkjet transparencies for overhead projection = new color overlay easily made.

I prefer color laser printers and compatable transparencies, but most cant afford a $350.00 printer.

Re:How does vertex programming work?

[Paul Slocum]

It's been a little while since I've programmed one, but you program it in assembly. The machine has quite a few built-in functions in ROM to handle the most common vector operations (a lot more than most vintage consoles). You can essentially say moveto(x,y). It also has routines to draw text, center/re-orient the beam, play sound, etc. More info here.

Re:What killed the Vectrex?

[AKAImBatman]

It was too expensive.

Try again. The Vectrex was a reasonably popular machine. It was simply unlucky enough to come into existence a mere year before the Great Video Game Crash of '83. In a Post-Crash World (apologies to John Katz), not a single *home-console* system did anything more than limp along. Everyone was buying computers like the Commodore 64, instead. It wasn't until Nintendo released the NES that home-console systems took off again.

I'm an original GCE Vectrex owner...

[Richard Steiner]

...and my unit still works. Those things are built like TANKS, and the buzzing sound while playing is music to my ears. They're *supposed* to sound like that. No, really! :-)

The original Vectrex Armor Attack has a bug that can be exploited for an almost infinite score, and the original Star Castle for the Vectrex is easy for an experienced player of the real arcade version to master (the Vectrex version gives you FOUR concurrent shots instead of three, making things too easy), but both games are still fun for the typical user, I suspect. Heck, I still enjoy them. I just don't ... exploit ... them. :-)

The original version of Minestorm started going crazy after level 13, skipping one or more levels before letting you play again, or showing strange shapes or even single dots instead of the traditional mines, but even the level that hits you with invisible mines is solvable -- teleport, then do sweeping shots, then teleport again, and repeat. With a little luck, you can get past. Once you hit the level up around 89 or so that has a single slow fireball on it, though, you're stuck. Once it leaves the screen, it's game over (we've never found a way past it).

I love my Veccie. I had it in college between 1981 and 1987, and at that time a video game was a rarity in the dorms, so it got a lot of use. From time to time it still does. It's one of the best pieces of electronics I've ever owned!

buzzzz

[b1t r0t]

I forgot to mention, the buzzing sound can be fixed by rerouting and shielding the speaker wire, but there are some who would consider that heresy.

Re:Light pen?

[mzs]

This post at rec.games.vectrex does a good job of explaining it:

Christopher L. Tumber

Jan 30 1999, 2:00 am

Of course I had to pull mine out and check how it works since theoretically it shouldn't work at all.

And really, it doesn't, at least not like a normal raster base light pen or gun works but those boys at GCE were clever...

What happens when you play a light pen "game" is that the game puts a cursor on the screen. You must use the light pen to DRAG this cursor around. If you just point the pen at a random location on the screen, it does not work. Instead, you must point to the cursor and drag it.

So what it's doing is it draw the cursor which is really a shape similar to a bullseye. As you move the pen, you cross the "rings" of the bullseye. This new position is detected as with any light pen/gun and the center of the cursor is moved to this new position. Repeat as neccessary.

So, you could do this with a light gun, but again you'd need to drag around a gun sight which probably isn't a great idea...