Vectrex video arcade console

[StatFreak]

Did anyone else here play Vectrex? (1982-1984)

[N8LHG]

Yeah,

I still have mine. I have the built in asteroids and the startrek game.

Mark

[StatFreak]

Yeah,

I still have mine. I have the built in asteroids and the startrek game.

Mark

    YEAH baby!! At least there are now two of us.   

This is a side of my collecting that I haven't brought to the board. I tried once before and got no response! I have two Vectrex units, three four controllers, and every item commercially released in the U.S. from GCE -- with the exception of the elusive MineStormII  -- including the light pen AND the 3-D imager.

I bought the VecRAM and VecFlash units a few years back from the maker over the internet and have an assortment of homebrew game files that can be loaded with these cartridges.

For those that aren't aware, the Vectrex was sold by Milton Bradley and made by GCE (General Consumer Electronics). It first hit the market for Christmas in 1992. GCE went bankrupt in early 1984. Milton Bradley merged with Hasbro that same year and the Vectrex was discontinued. The original designers, Western Technologies/Smith Engineering, decided to release the code and the rights to reproduce the overlays and manuals to the general public for non-commercial use in the early 1990's. There are now many new games for the unit designed by the user community.

In addition there are PC emulators to play the games for those who don't own the original hardware.

Here are a couple of links
http://gamingmuseum.classicgaming.gamespy.com/vectrex.html
http://www.classicgamecreations.com
http://vectrex.classicgaming.gamespy.com
http://www.vectrex.biz/

[StatFreak]

Some Pictures.

Back in the mid '80s I was in a Rock band. We played only original music - no cover tunes. Anyway, after a concert we would often party at my house, and the drummer and I would stay up all night playing Vectrex. I have a lot of good memories playing this with friends. It was way ahead of it's time back in the day.

The original box suffered water damage from a dripping leak while in storage at one point. Fortunately, the machine inside was still in its plastic wrap and suffered no ill effects.

[StatFreak]

Pt 2.

[StatFreak]

Pt. 3

[StatFreak]

The games ran on the Motorola 68A09 chip at 1.6MHz with 64k of RAM.
It had 3 separate tone generators which allowed three part harmony in the music, and the waveforms of the tones could be shaped to create different voicing. They even produced one game, Spike, that spoke. It was very primitive and only said "Hello, Spike! ... Hello, Molly!" but this was in 1983-84.

The sound was as good as professional arcades of the time as I recall and far better than the Nintendo/Colecovision or the Atari 5200, which were the two popular games at the time that I bought my Vectrex. I had actually gone to the store (Sears) with cash to buy the Colecovision. They had all three systems up on a display for people to play. I took one look at Vectrex and was hooked! It was black and white, but the games were fast and furious, the controls were very responsive and arcade-like, the music sounded like an arcade, and the vector graphics were cool. A couple of hours later and I had forgotten all about the Coleco system and found myself trotting home with my new Vectrex.

[StatFreak]

Here is another link:
http://www.vectrexnews.com/

This page has links in the left window pointing to lots of interesting static pages.
In particular, check out the "Prototype and unreleased items" and the "New hardware developments" sections near the bottom of the left frame.

The zektor link shows the Vectrex being used as an X-Y monitor to display the original MAME of Tempest and some cool artwork.
Another link to their product page: http://www.zektor.com/zvg/ZVG.html

Someone even reproduced the 3D glasses and is selling it for 75 Euros or about $96. There is a screen shot of one part of 3D Narrow Escape, by far my favorite of the 3D games.
http://store.madtronix.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=31&osCsid=s9evuhuf5inmgef3ms60j5npt5