Vectrex In the Spotlight - A wonderously unique retro experience

[Richard H.]

A bit of blatant promotion here

 

If anyone's going to CGE 2007, Chris Romero will be selling VecFlash-USB's for the special show price of $70. This is the latest firmware version (which has a 1 second per game download speed).

[Mayhem]

I guess that'll be my excuse to finally pick one up then

[Rob Mitchell]

That makes it very hard to get the remaining foot off so I can glue two new feet on (I cannot find, after much looking, a foot the same dimension as the original) without pulling most of the insides of the unit apart so I can get to the nut. All those stored high voltages floating around makes me very wary when I open my Vectrex.

 

I found exact replacement feet years ago .. PM me.

 

After dealing with analog joysticks on the 5200, I am having second thoughts about the Vectrex.

 

There are digital to analog circuits that make the Vectrex rock!!

 

VecFlash-USB's for the special show price of $70. This is the latest firmware version (which has a 1 second per game download speed).

 

Gotta get me one of these!

 

Rob Mitchell

Edited July 4, 2007 by Rob Mitchell

[JB]

After dealing with analog joysticks on the 5200, I am having second thoughts about the Vectrex.

 

There are digital to analog circuits that make the Vectrex rock!!

Rock MORE.

 

I really need to get/make one of those.

The Vec controller LOOKS great, but it doesn't play very good.

[Video]

Maybe...but it's still a far better built controller than the 5200 was, just an slightly awkward pad design

 

Way I've heard it is they were designing the handheld when they heard about the GameBoy. Brawling with Nintendo was deemed a bad idea, so they scrapped it.

 

Not true, according to Jay Smith himself, what RevRob said is what he said. Hasbro thought the selling price was too high for the public, even though the Gameboy ended up launching for me. The project was scrapped more than a year before anyone in the West had heard about the Gameboy.

Oh...

 

Learn something every day.

 

 

HASBRO! YOU SUCK!

 

A handheld vectrix would be cool. Now there's a project that would be cool to see someone pull off. Lots of people making portabal consoles from Atari to 360, but the Vectrix would require a special monitor of some kind to work (I think, or is it the same as a standard CRT just with a guided laser or something)

The Vectrex itself is about as portable a console as it's going to get while still being a 'Vectrex' Remember that vector CRT displays (like the Vectrex, the original arcade Asteroids, etc) are very different from all other forms of displays.

Actually, for black and white displays, only the driving hardware is different. The CRTs used are the same for raster and vector.

 

I'm much less sure for color vector displays.

 

 

 

But it certainly won't adapt to LCDs, which are a basic requirement for a "true portable."

 

That's what I was looking for. If that's true, then you can buy any old tiny TV (the actual Tube TV's) and probably shove the rest of the system in there with it. It would still be fairly big, but they made those tubes down to around 2" if I recall correctly. And you can find them at 5" all day long. But that would involve rebuildint the electroncics fo the TV itself, since the current ones probably won't accept Vectrix signals natively.

 

Still...that's a lot of effort to make a fairly portable system more portable. (it's at least AS portable as the Virtualboy was ) You just need a battery pack, and a different transformer (or bypass the built in one...if it has one) in order to make it portable in it's current form.

 

Oh yeah....and DAMN YOU HASBRO (or whoever had the portable one)

[JB]

That's what I was looking for. If that's true, then you can buy any old tiny TV (the actual Tube TV's) and probably shove the rest of the system in there with it. It would still be fairly big, but they made those tubes down to around 2" if I recall correctly. And you can find them at 5" all day long. But that would involve rebuildint the electroncics fo the TV itself, since the current ones probably won't accept Vectrix signals natively.

You strip the old electronics off.

If you keep the TV electronics, it's a raster display and fundamentally incompatible.

 

It's only really useful if you need a replacement tube and can find the right size.

[Steril707]

And, while you are checking out some Vectrex Games with the awesome ParaJVE Emulator (get it here: http://vectrex-emu.blogspot.com/ ), or are using the not less awesome VecFlash Cart with your Vectrex System, you might want top check out my humble site with demos of my latest coding efforts, "Blocks" and "Vec-Fu" which you can play in ParaJVE or upload on your VecFlash...

 

http://www.Borrmann.in

 

 

 

Vectrex Homebrewing is still alive!!!

Have fun...!!!

 

Mike

[+FujiSkunk]

Rev. Rob, as always, this was a very interesting article. I have a couple of little nitpicks, though.

 

too many words.

 

That isn't one of them. Somebody needs to develop a better attention span.

 

Anyway...

 

The unavoidable port to the 2600 proved the limitations of home console. Without a special screen, vector graphics are impossible. Many Asteroids fans revolted at what is commonly accepted to be the worst version of Asteroids to have ever been produced.

 

That's not really true, given my experiences. Yes, the 2600 version was (and had to be) scaled down from the arcade game, but Atari did a much better job with Asteroids than they did with, say, Pac-Man or even Defender. While I've heard plenty of comparisons, I've never heard anyone say 2600 Asteroids is a bad game. Plus, I can't see how anybody could rate the 2600 version lower than the Atari 400/800 version. There's a very good reason why the 5200 port (based on the same code as the 8-bit release) never officially saw the light of day

 

Despite the success of Battlezone, Atari was not in a position to port this game in its arcade form. The Atari 2600 and other game consoles of the time were woefully outdated technologically, and relied on tech from the mid 1970’s. This would prove to be a factor in the pending Video Game Crash.

 

That's not really true either. While the 2600 was showing its age by the time of the crash, it was still holding its own against other consoles quite easily, and those other consoles were developed with newer '80s technology. It wasn't the age of the technology that caused the crash, it was the glut of horrible games coupled with the arrogance of the industry leader that did it in.

 

Plus, while the article doesn't actually say so, it seems to imply the home consoles' inability to recreate vector games contributed to the crash. I don't think that was a major influence. Some people (myself included) actually prefer the 2600 version of Battlezone to the arcade game

[HP Atari King of Michigan]

I actually used to have a Vectrex. Alas, my father sold it underneath me not too long ago. I had two games (aside from Minestorm): Heads Up (soccer game), and Star Trek.

[Rev. Rob]

That's not really true, given my experiences. Yes, the 2600 version was (and had to be) scaled down from the arcade game, but Atari did a much better job with Asteroids than they did with, say, Pac-Man or even Defender. While I've heard plenty of comparisons, I've never heard anyone say 2600 Asteroids is a bad game. Plus, I can't see how anybody could rate the 2600 version lower than the Atari 400/800 version. There's a very good reason why the 5200 port (based on the same code as the 8-bit release) never officially saw the light of day.

 

Well, I personally do not like the 2600 version of Asteroids. That's just my opinion, and I know I'm in the minority on this one. There was a homebrew where the asteroids are outlined, and I do like that one a lot better. I think that I since I played the arcade first (and a lot) that is ruined the 2600 version for me. Obviously an opinion that it's a good game is perfectly valid, seeing as that is clearly the concensus of the majority.

 

That's not really true either. While the 2600 was showing its age by the time of the crash, it was still holding its own against other consoles quite easily, and those other consoles were developed with newer '80s technology. It wasn't the age of the technology that caused the crash, it was the glut of horrible games coupled with the arrogance of the industry leader that did it in.

 

Plus, while the article doesn't actually say so, it seems to imply the home consoles' inability to recreate vector games contributed to the crash. I don't think that was a major influence. Some people (myself included) actually prefer the 2600 version of Battlezone to the arcade game

 

Well, I am not trying to say that the lack of vector graphics did the industry in. I don't believe that at all. Also, I don't believe that aging technology was the leading cause of the crash, but a very overlooked contributing factor. Obviously, I agree with everything that you said, and would also at that retail glut and monolopolistic business practices, such as Atari not allowing developers to port their products to competors, were main factors as well.

 

As for the Battlezone comment, my only point was that consumers were beginning to expect an arcade experience at home.You mentioned Pacman, I think that's a perfect example of how technical limitations of the then current generation of hardware disillusioned consumers and potential consumers.

 

Thanks a lot for your feedback, I appreciate it greatly.

[accousticguitar]

As for the Battlezone comment, my only point was that consumers were beginning to expect an arcade experience at home.You mentioned Pacman, I think that's a perfect example of how technical limitations of the then current generation of hardware disillusioned consumers and potential consumers.

Pac Man is not a good example of technical limitations of the hardware. Ms. Pac Man used the same hardware and is a great game. Pac Man is simply a great example of poor programming.

[Atarifever]

Pac Man is simply a great example of poor programming.

I think that's a bit unfair. It's an example of rushed programming. I think it's pretty good programming given the constraints that were forced on the guy (and who wouldn't give in to those constraints for the kind of money being offered).

[Video]

Pac=man for the 2600 was just an avverage game that got a lot of bashing (after the release of MS Pac-man) because it was called Pac-man, not because it was a particularly bad game.

 

I would agree that outdated hardware was a contributing factor to the game crash....I mean, a lot of people started just releasing rehashes of other games with different graphics, mainly cause the knowledge/idea base at the time was simply tapped out.

 

If you could travel through time, and take all the 2600 games that have been made since 2k with you, you'd probably get the Atari to live a little longer, but the market crash would have still happened. It probably wouldn't have been nearly as drastic though, and maybe games would have still been in the consumer minds untill the NES came along.

 

But seriously, lack of good games wasn't the real problem. It was the abundance of crap that was everywhere that was the real problem.

 

Oh, and put me in the group that prefers 2600 Battlezone (and asteroids) to the vector Arcadee counterpart. (and yes, I did play the arcade versions befor I played the 2600 versions....the 2600 just clicked for some reason)