Matt Fisher

Yes, please! I wonder, though, did you just get the LD player or did you get the whole thing? I think the LD player is simply a rebadged Pioneer (can't remember the model number) and it seems a lot more players were made than whole units. If you got the whole thing, just about the find of a lifetime!

Dunno what the problem might be (brightness knob bad was the first thing that popped into my head). I do know that if you run it for very long in that condition you will soon have another problem-a big spot of fried phosphors in the exact middle of your screen! That would be damage that you could not fix except by getting a new tube (good luck with that!) or taking one from a parts vectrex. In a perfect world, you would be able to fix this without even having the monitor connected, but that may not be possible. Try to minimize the time it's on, though.

He sent me an email about two weeks ago to get my address for shipping cost. I have replied twice but have not gotten any response yet...

I'm in as well!

I use an old 8-track case. Vec carts are much smaller of course, but they fit just fine and that leaves plenty of space left over for overlays, manuals, etc.

The Atari arcade game Quantum also filled in some objects.

True, but not by me! I got all three of my Nuon players at pawn shops, both of my CD-i players at thrift shops, and my Laseractive with Sega PAC at a thrift shop. I don't think I paid more than $10 for any of the Nuons or CD-i's but I will admit that the Laseractive was around $50. For some reason, thrifts are still way overpricing LD players, so the Laseractive wasn't any more than if it had been a regular player. By the way, my 910 has exactly the same problem with the drawer not closing all the way. I wonder if that it common.

I beleive that I, Robot was first to use polygons and Cosmic Chasm was first home game ported to arcade (from Vectrex).

Well, not the whole thumbstick, only the part that screws on top. Alex, who had these made and has them for sale, asked me to post about the project on AtariAge for him. Details at the link: http://vectorgaming....play&thread=407

I am the same way, and my grail would be my MBX as well. I have all of the games and overlays except the Trolley game (can't recall the whole title). We had a 99/4A when I was growing up, and I LUSTED after the MBX. Voice control! Are you kidding! Alas, my dad could not be convinced to purchase one, even if one could have been found. Well, finally picked one up on eBay and it is just as cool as I thought it would be, although I don't have as much time to play as I would like. Also picked up loaded PEB at a pawn shop (who took that in?) and so now I can play Tunnels of Doom off of a floppy instead of the cassette deck I had to use back in the day. I also am a sucker for add-ons and oddball controllers as well, and own many such failed products, like the ECS, the Vectrex light pen and 3-D imager, the 32X, the SMS 3D glasses and adapter, etc. I've always thought it interesting that so many of the games meant to highlight these products were baseball games. The MBX, ECS, and ColecoVision Super Action Controllers, at least, all had baseball games as their "flagship" titles. I doubt if this is a coincidence, and I suppose it reflects the overall popularity of baseball in the early 80s. Today I suppose all the games would be football games.

"bayoucollector". He purchased a boxed Vectrex for $20 and, as if that were not good enough, inside was a boxed Mr. Boston. There's a thread in the "show us your collection" forum. Puts all of my finds to shame, not to mention everyone else's...

Don't think I'm making any friends with my posts in this thread, but I also once bought CIB Chronotrigger and Final Fantasy III on the same day at the same thrift store for $1 apiece... I have indeed been very lucky! Nothing compared to the guy on here who got the Vectrex Mr.Boston, though.

Believe it or not, never got a free cart. Got a big bag (around 20 titles) of SNES carts a thrift for $6 once, though, so that's about a quarter a pop. Oh yeah, the titles included Super Mario RPG and ... Earthbound. Funny thing is I don't remeber either one of those being visible before I got the bag home and opened it.

This would only be the third boxed Mr. Boston known. Pretty lucky, I would say! By the way, I'm willing to bet that either your cartridge contacts or the connector on the Vectrex itself are dirty. If it loads a little, as you describe, I wouldn't think that bad solder inside the console is the problem. Whenever I have a game that freezes like that, reseating the cart a couple of times is the most I have ever had to do to get it going. If you decide to try cleaning, I wouldn't be too aggressive cleaning that cart, though...

Ok, not as impressive as some here, but: All USA games w/ manuals and overlays (Ok, no Minestorm II or Mr. Boston) with the following boxed: Scramble (x2) Pole Position Polar Rescue Star Trek Armour Attack Rip Off Cosmic Chasm Web Wars Solar Quest Clean Sweep Fortress of Narzod Homebrews: Spike's Circus Debris Zantis Sectis Sundance War of the Worlds 3D Sector X I, Cyborg Royal 21 Warrior and Hellhole on the way Vecflash Harware: 3 Vectrexes w/ controllers 2 additional controllers light pen 3D imager and color discs carrying bag Overdrive controller Vectrosis controller homemade lightpen homemade arcade-type controller

That's what I get for never reading instructions! Well, it didn't take me long to figure it out, at least. I should have known that there was a reason no autocenter function was used. Fury, just like on the overlay redesign for Warrior, you seem to think of everything. I wonder why the controls for HC were so crappy to begin with?

After playing a few games with the overdrive, I can confirm all Fury says about Hyperchase and PP. The OD controller turns me from a terrible HC player into a somewhat less terrible player. In all seriousness, HD is near impossible with the standard controller and pretty darn fun with the OD. Steering is a breeze, with the fine adjustments needed to dodge other cars much more easily accomplished on the OD. Shifting is also easier, as I found that I could steer with my left index finger and thumb and shift up without even taking my thumb off the wheel. I did have to take the thumb off to downshift, but that's less of an issue as you mostly downshift after a wreck. All in all, a must for HC, at least. The one issue I had was that after a crash off the side of the road, I sometimes didn't center the wheel well enough and just crashed right back into the wall when play resumed. I'm probably going to put a piece of tape on the wheel to indicate center, as it is not self-centering and there is no indent. This is not to be taken as a criticism, however; I'm just noting that you may have to adjust your technique a little. I'm sure that after a while, I will not be crashing into walls so much. The overall performace and build of the OD is excellent. With the incredibly nit-picky exception of the filed-off DB9 connector, the OD appears professionally made. The wheel is sturdy ans smooth and the buttons are just where they need to be. Excellent job, Fury! As Fury indicated, though, don't bother to use the OD with Pole Position; suffice it to say that you'll be sticking with the standard controller for that one. Haven't tried it with the home brews yet.

Got mine yesterday! Looks good, and hope to get a chance to try it out tonight. I believe Hyperchase is the only analog driving game, so I imagine it'll work best for that. I will report back.

George at Fury Unlimited is at it again, this time with a new driving controller for Vectrex, called the "Overdrive": http://www.furyunlim...m/_sgg/m2_1.htm Looks pretty awesome and I've already ordered mine. The title "Night Trucker" sounds intriguing. (Does this mean we can expect Speed Freak at some point? Let me now make an official request.) Also on the site are pix of the Warrior boxes, which look great. Does this guy sleep?

I'm afraid I wasn't clear before about just what thing you should open up. I dont think that opening the cart will help. You should be able to access the contacts without doing that. Opening the console should allow you to access the connector inside, which I believe has metal parts that can be bent or cleaned for better contact. Having said that, if you don't know how to work on video monitors, DON'T DO THAT. Cathode ray tubes can carry a potentially lethal charge long after the unit has been off and unplugged. If you touch the wrong thing, you could seriously injure yourself or perhaps worse. I don't feel comfortable advising you how to do this safely, but you can google this topic if you must. Some on the internet downplay this risk, but I am not one of them. No video game is worth a trip to the hospital. I have never heard of anybody actually getting killed, but many who have worked on video monitors have been thrown across the room, had broken bones when their arm was slammed into a wall, etc.

As long as the other carts work OK, I'd still say there is a good chance that your SC cartridge is not yet clean enough to work 100%. I have a few games on my Vectrexes that will sometimes not work properly until the cart has been seated a few times, but I can always get it to work. I've never had to aggressively clean any of the contacts, but if I did, I would use something like solvent or magic eraser to do so. (I beleive magic eraser is called something else in Europe. It's melamine foam.) I suppose it's possible that the cart may be bad, but I don't think that happens very often. I think it's also possible to open the thing up and adjust the connector for better contact, but I've never tried it. I know one thing for certain--that's it's not a region lockout. No such thing as a PAL or NTSC Vectrex, as it's a vector monitor that conforms to no broadcast video standard. Any cart will work in any Vectrex, assuming everything is working properly. It's worth noting that for less that the price of a new Star Castle cart, you could get a multicart with every original release. Strongly recommended. Good luck, and welcome to the wonderful world of Vectrex, the best home video system ever, in my opinion.

It could be that the alignment on the Vectrex is off a bit. Not too surprising for something 30 years old to have drifted a bit. I always adjust my Vectrexes using solar quest because the colored spot for the sun is pretty small. You just center it and I have not noticed any issues. The service manual that explains where the positioning pots are is online, I think. I got my Dark Tower overlay today and have to say that's it's pretty darn nice. Is it as nice as the originals? No, but pretty good, and the only real option, at least for that game. I expect to fill the gaps in the originals I don't own with these repros

Pretty good haul the other day. SNES: Ultima the Black Gate CIB Secret of Mana E.V.O. Super Mario World Super Mario All-Stars Yoshi's Island Killer Instinct Super Metroid Mega Man X N64: Turok 2 GB: Final Fantasy Adventure GC:GBA cable $2 apiece for all, except Turok was $3.

Hmm... Might have still been a good deal, depending on what model they were. If they were that heavy, they might have been Cornwalls, LaScalas, of Heresys. I got an essentially mint pair of Heresy IIs last year at a thrift store for $20, but that's a thread for another forum... Back on topic, had a little time to kill before meeting a friend for drinks last night, so I hit the SA and picked up Phantasy Star for SMS, complete in case, for $0.49. Only one lonely SMS game in the entire store (no system either), and that's the one they have. Also got 4 Xbox games for a buck apiece, but I considered the PS the real score. Now I really have to hook up the SMS again.

Keep in mind that you don't need to use the actual Sega glasses, any shutter glasses with a 1/8" (3.5 mm) plug will do. A few years ago, there were always tons of these for sale on ebay for just a few bucks, but they don't seem to be as readily available now. Even though I have a pair of Sega glasses, I use another pair because I don't want to damage the Sega glasses, they are not very comfortable, and the newer glasses have less ghosting. It might also be possible to get by without the Sega adapter by using one of these or something similar, for watching field sequential 3D material on your tube TV: http://www.ultimate3dheaven.com/3dshthfortwo1.html You run the composite video out of the player into this and then into the TV. The shutter glasses plug into the box and now you can watch, for example, 3D DVDs, like those awful Imax ones where you almost always end up in the front car of a roller coaster or something similar and stuff is always flying out of the screen at you. I can verify that this method works with the Laseractive, which, like the SMS, also had a special adapter to get 3D. You think prices for SMS 3D gear are insane? Can't remember exactly what the last pair of Laseractive glasses went for on ebay that I saw, but it was several hundred dollars, and this was without the adapter. Anyhoo, this is a much cheaper way to get 3D on the Laseractive that may also work on the SMS. I can try it out if anyone cares.