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 ClassicGaming.com's Museum
Vectrex -
1982-1984
(Also known as the Milton-Bradley Vectrex)
Vecrex:
Real Arcade Play at Home. |
System History
In October 1982, General Consumer
Electronics (GCE) released the Vectrex for $199. The Vectrex
wasn't just your average game console, however, and even to
this day there has never been a videogame system quite like
it. With it's built in vector monitor and detachable control
board, the Vectrex captured a sleek look and feel that would
be duplicated 2 years later with Apple Computer's release of
it's Apple Macintosh.
Atari's Asteroids
arcade coinop. | The
Vectrex was a completely vector graphics based system, hence
its name. Vector graphics are the kind of graphics used in
such popular games as Asteroids, Battlezone,
Space War, and Tempest. Most videogames use
raster graphics, which utilize pixels. In this type of
display, the beam inside your televsion or monitor scans
across horizontally from the top down, drawing each row of
pixels. Vector graphics, on the other hand, draw to exact
coordinates - using x/y or "vector" values. Vectors graphics
are very sharp and allowed the Vectrex to produce some
outstanding visual effects such as scaling and rotation. To
produce its special graphics, the Vectrex had its own nine by
eleven-inch monochrome monitor (color vectors would have been
very difficult and expensive to produce).
The Vectrex
had it's origins at Western Technologies/Smith Engineering,
when some of the engineers wanted to find a way to use a bunch
of the cheap cathode ray tubes (CRT's) they had just
purchased. An all in one vector gaming system was decided, and
the rest is history.
Originally called the Mini Arcade
(which is the feeling the Vectrex was trying to capture), a
company by the name of General Consumer Electronics (GCE)
decided to lease the Vectrex and market it after a name change
of course.
 To help capture that home arcade feel, and to
compensate for the lack of color, plastic overlays were
provided with each game. Permanent overlays were a common
place in arcade games of the 1970's, where most games were
black and white. If a video game manufacturer wanted color,
they would literally affix colored cellophane strips to the
monitor screen, such as was done in Atari's Breakout or
Taito's Space Invaders. Likewise, if the playfield was to be
to complicated to draw (be it in detail, or a color problem)
because of the graphics limitations of the time, overlays
could be used to render permanent backgrounds or give
ambiance. Still other overlays would be on the plastic screen
of the arcade game and would add anything from exciting
borders to game instructions. The Vectrex overlays would slip
on and off the Vectrex screen, and would provide some of all
of the above.
The Vectrex arcade
style controller. | The
Vectrex controller was also designed with an arcade experience
in mind. The rectangular box was large enough to be stable and
sit on a desktop or a lap. Mounted on it were 4 fullsize
arcade buttons and a sturdy top heavy joystick. The joystick
was also designed to fit neatly in to a compartment beneath
the Vectrex screen, allowing the Vectrex to remain quite
compact when not in use.
When the Vectrex shipped in
1982, it included a built-in game, Mine Storm (from the
Asteroids genre). A recessed handle allowed the unit to
be easily picked up and carried, although its heavy weight
kept it from being a true "portable" system. Still, families
liked the Vectrex since its built-in screen allowed it to be
played without tying up the family TV set.
A Vectrex
advertisement. No, they're not on anything.
Really. | In
March of 1983, Milton Bradley decided they wanted to get into
the videogame business and purchased GCE, thus acquiring the
Vectrex. Milton Bradley, with it's already established games
distribution channels, quickly expanded the Vectrex's
distribution overseas. By summer 1983, distribution had begun
in Europe and Japan, but by then end of that year the great
video game crash had occured and the industry was feeling it's
effects. Milton Bradley closed down GCE and decided to
distribute the Vectrex itself, discounting it as much as
possible (first $150, then $100). This plan lasted until March
of that year when they discontinued sales in Europe and slowly
phased out the U.S. the rest of that year. They eventually
released all rights back to Smith Engineering. It's speculated
that Milton Bradley washed it's hands of the Vectrex like this
to look more attractive to Hasbro (whome they would merge with
by May of that year), who was not interested in entering any
area of video games.
The Vectrex did show up again a
few years later when Abel & Associates converted the
Vectrex into an "entertainment device" for use in malls or
pizza parlors. For a quarter, you could have the machine
perform the "Luscher Color Test" (yeah, that's a great
application for a monochrome machine), in which you would pick
colors in the order that they appealed to you. Then the
machine would tell you about your personality. Wah hoo.
Vectrex machines have also been found converted into
heart-monitoring devices as well.
The Vectrex came
close to coming back from the dead in 1988, when Smith
Engineering considered resurrecting the Vectrex as a handheld
unit. Milton Bradley thought the $100+ price tag of the unit
would make it unsellable, so the idea was scrapped. Nintendo's
Game Boy was released the following year and enjoyed huge
commercial success, but somehow the handheld Vectrex concept
was never revived.
Life After
Today, Smith Engineering
has graciously condoned the not-for-profit distribution of any
of the Vectrex's duplicable materials, including games,
overlays and manuals.
Because of the system's
uniqueness, it has inspired a loyal group of Vectrex fanatics
who have churned out emulators, web pages, and even new games.
Foremost among these Vectrex programmers is John
Dondzila, whose first ever contribution to classic console
gaming was the 1996 Vectrex game Vector Vaders.
Dondzila has gone on to produce several new games, including
All Good Things, Spike Hoppin', and
Patriots. In 1999, he produced the first ever 64K
Vectrex game, Vecmania, which contains several
different games all on one cartridge. Sean Kelly produces a
Vectrex multicart - a single cartridge that contains almost
the entire library of Vectrex games. Others have produced
Vectrex versions of Frogger and Galaxian, among
others, making Vectrex possibly the most supported
"dead" console, second perhaps only to the Atari
2600.
Games
There aren't really any famous
Vectrex games, probably because the system never got to be too
popular. But there were some pretty good games, including the
Scramble port, Web Wars, Fortress of
Narzod, Polar Rescue and Cosmic Chasm. The
latter was one of the first home games to be ported to the
arcade (usually, it's vice-versa) due to a unique licensing
agreement with arcade game designer Cinematronics.
The
version of Minestorm that shipped with the Vectrex
actually had a major bug in that if you got to level 13, the
game would crash. If you complained to the company, you would
be sent a bug-free version of the game (Minestorm/II)
free of charge. Few people did this, apparently, since
Minestorm/II is rarely seen today.
By far the
strangest anomaly of the Vectrex library is the elusive Mr.
Boston promotional cartridge. It is a slightly modified
version of the game Clean Sweep, apparently designed as
a promotion for the "Mr. Boston's" chain of liquor stores in
the eastern US. At least two copies are known to exist; one
has its own screen overlay, and both contain production ROMs,
indicating the cartridges were commercially produced.
Accessories
The 3D goggles, a
first of their kind for home gaming
systems. | The
most interesting accessory for the Vectrex was the 3-D Imager.
Literally the first in the gaming industry to have 3D, the
goggles also solved the color problem with the Vectrex. Using
a removeable spinning disk (each 3D game had it's own special
color wheel) inserted inside the glasses, and a complicated
timing mechanism, the wearer would be immersed in 3D color
vector graphics. This did create one problem though - because
it was a spinning disc, it created a gyroscopic effect. If you
turned your head suddenly, it would often cause the disc to
want to stay put and run in to the edges of the glasses. Of
interesting note, when Sega introduced their own 3-D goggles
for the Sega
Master System several years later, in their TV ads they
initially advertised their goggles as being the first. The ad
was pulled shortly after for obvious reasons.
The Vectrex
Lightpen. | There
was also a light pen rleased, which allowed you to draw on the
screen and came packaged with Art Master, a drawing/doodling
program. Two other innovative titles were released for the
light pen - Melody Master (a music program that allowed you to
write notes on the screen and have them played) and Animaction
(an animation program).
Neither of these accessories
sold in very large numbers, and as a result are incredibly
difficult to find today (especially the 3-D Imager). Most of
the planned Vectrex accessories weren't released. There was
supposed to be an add-on that would turn the Vectrex in to a
full fledged computer,
but it never came out. GCE did demonstrate it at the '83
Summer Consumer Electronics show, and it was to include an
extra 16K of RAM, 65 key keyboard, built in BASIC, and use
special "wafer tapes" for storage. Other planned accessories
included a touch-sensitive screen (a prototype is known to
exist), a printer, a disk drive, and even a modem. A color
Vectrex prototype was shown at the 1999 Classic Gaming Expo.
John Dondzila sells a Sega Genesis controller modified
to work on the Vectrex on his website.
This is good news for Vectrex fans since the standard
controllers are somewhat prone to breakdown and replacements
are nearly impossible to find.
Rob Mitchell
sells Atari 2600 paddles modified to work on the Vectrex,
giving a smoother experience for Pole Position and other side
to side movement games.
Emulation
The first Vectrex emulator
was DVE
(short for DOS Vectrex Emulator). It's pretty good-it even has
support for overlays and the light pen-but it's no longer
strongly supported. The MESS emulator seems to be
the platform of choice for future Vectrex emulation projects.
Vectrex games are available in The
Vault's Vectrex Roms section.
Links
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