DIGITISER
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE VECTREX: the loveliest thing of all time

21/3/2018

8 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
I don't own a lot of original gaming hardware. Truth is, I can never quite justify the expense to myself. I feel guilty treating myself to stuff at the best of times, and especially when I know it's something that nobody else in my family is going to benefit from.

I've got a few little bits and pieces, on the cheaper end of the scale. I've got an original Astro Wars machine that I've had for years, a Tomytronic 3D handheld (because I never had one back in the day), and a Digital Derby Auto Raceway. I don't tend to pick up old consoles because, frankly, it's so much more convenient to play old games through emulation. And even then, I'd still rather lob a few quid at the Nintendo Store to play an old SNES game than download it for free. 

In fact, this is the reason why there are only really two old games systems I've ever thought about owning, because they're the two which are the hardest to emulate; Nintendo's Virtual Boy and the Vectrex.

The Virtual Boy got a lot of stick upon release, and is undoubtedly Nintendo's biggest flop. Nonetheless, it's a quirky looking thing, and I've long liked the idea of owning one. I guess I've got a bit of a soft spot for the underdoggos, and it's a gap in my gaming knowledge that I'd like to one day plug.

The Vectrex, however, is a machine I've desired since I was a kid. I think I first saw ads for it in imported US comics, and it looked too good to be true. 

I'd always had an abundance of love for arcade games with vector graphics - they're somehow timeless, and still look futuristic to me. Oh, how disappointed I was when I played Asteroids on the Atari 2600... but here was a machine which would let me have actual, real, glowing vector graphics in my own home! I mean, it even had its own screen, for pity's sake!! To an 11 year-old, that was hands down the coolest thing I could conceive of.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been tempted by a Vectrex on eBay. I've come so close on a number of occasions, but common sense has always kicked me to the kerb. Fortunately, my resolve was reinforced last year after I attended to Retro Revival event near Birmingham. I played on a Vectrex and came away disappointed. The control stick was incredibly loose and unresponsive, and I decided that were I ever to own one it would probably gather dust. 

​Well, was I ever wrong...

But first: some history.
Picture
KARR TROUBLE
The two people most directly attributed to the creation of the Vectrex were Jay Smith and Gerry Karr. Smith had worked on the Apollo space program before moving into making electronic toys for Mattel, where he created the Microvision - the first handheld console with interchangeable cartridges. The Microvision was distributed through Milton Bradley (they of "MB Games"), which is where he met Gerry Karr. The two got to work trying to create a games machine which would push the envelope of what was possible on a home system.

The original brief Smith and Karr set themselves was to build a console capable of running the arcade enorm-o-game Asteroids (which it essentially would do in the form of Mine Storm, that would eventually be built into every Vectrex). As development continued, the proto-Vectrex started to take shape as the "Mini Arcade", running on a system with an integral five-inch screen. 

Initially, Smith and Karr offered the device to Kenner, then enjoying huge success with its line of Star Wars action figures. Kenner apparently took the best part of a year to decide not to proceed, at which point Smith and Karr approached General Consumer Electronics, a new company formed by ex-Intellivision employee Ed "The Kraken" Krakauer. 

Unlike Kenner, Krakauer took little convincing, though insisted the screen be enlarged and positioned vertically so that it looked less like a TV, and the name be changed to Vector-X - which later got contracted to Vectrex. 

The finalised hardware became the first console to have an analogue joystick, and the first to position it on the left of the controller - inspired by the layout of an F-14 fighter cockpit, apparently. Adding authenticity to its claims of offering an arcade at home, many of the original games were developed in conjunction with Cinematronics - one of the era's main developers of vector arcade titles (along with Atari and Sega). 
Picture
PUMPED OUT
The Vectrex was released in North America in late-1982, then pumped out in limited quantities into Europe then Japan (where distribution was handled by Bandai) in mid-1983. General Consumer Electronics was eventually bought out by MB, following promising sales of the Vectrex over Christmas '82. 

Their timing couldn't have been worse, alas; the games industry crashed in 1983, and by the time MB merged with Hasbro in early 1984, and the Vectrex was discontinued, remaining stock was selling for a quarter of its original $199 price. An expensive machine to manufacture - the only one, at the time, with its own built-in screen, see - it ended up costing Milton Bradley tens of millions of dollars.

Prior to all this, there had been plans for a Vectrex 2 - with a colour display (the original was black and white, with coloured plastic overlays, like early arcade games) - a keyboard peripheral, a music pack, and a speech recognition unit (a demo of a voice-activated baseball game was used as proof of concept).

Though ambitions were clearly sky-high, in the end only two Vectrex add-ons were released; a light pen and set of 3D goggles, which were compatible with a handful of games. 

In the late-80s, there were tentative plans to release a handheld Vectrex, and a prototype was knocked-up using a Sinclair pocket TV. While MB continued to dither about whether or not to go ahead, Nintendo released the Game Boy - and the company realised that it wouldn't be able to compete at a competitive price point.
Picture
STOCKLESS
By being a system quite unlike any other ever released, the Vectrex has maintained a long afterlife. Following the liquidation of remaining stock, both the hardware and its games were released into the public domain for non-profit use, and there's now a healthy home-brew scene. Independent developers and hobbyists are pushing the system further than it ever went during its brief life.

The Vectrex continues to have a sort of mystique about it. Somehow it has remained ageless for many of my generation - to me, it still looks like something which has arrived from the future, fully formed and perfect. As mentioned above, I always feared it might actually disappoint were I ever to own one, and that - aside from the cost - might've factored into why I convinced myself never to splash out for one.

But yes... I was wrong. Thanks to the ridiculous generosity of Digitiser readers Emma and Nikki Heald, who - utterly unbidden - have gifted me with one, I am now the proud owner of a Vectrex. Much to my amazement, unlike so much in life it actually lives up to the expectations I had in my head.

It's a truly beautiful, original, machine. The joystick on the hardware I played at Retro Revival was obviously worse for wear, because the one on my Vectrex is solid and responsive. The whole system, in fact, feels well designed - and still seems like something from the future rather than a device that was released 35 years ago. The fact it's light enough to be portable means it deserved better than the fate it got. It should've been a phenomenon. 

For me there has always been something genuinely magical about vector graphics. To have them running in my own home, almost four decades after I drooled over those Vectrex ads, is something I never expected to have.

Thank you, Nikki and Emma. You made an old gamer very emotional.
Picture
8 Comments
MENTALIST
21/3/2018 10:24:58 am

There's something unaccountably magical about the Vectrex. I first had a go at one of those Game Expos the year before last, and it was almost as amazing as I expected. The joystick was a bit weird - I wondered if the unit was slightly broken, and the game was some sort of platform thing, which didn't really seem to be the device's forte.

But just looking at that little screen with line graphics crisper as anything that would be seen in home gaming until Geometry Wars on the Xbox 360, it's absurdly pleasing.

Reply
MENTALIST
21/3/2018 10:33:03 am

Oh, good god, I shouldn't have looked at the prices they go for on ebay, they look dangerously affordable.

NO! I shan't but one. I shall eschew purchasing all retro hardware until I can find where the hell I put the SNES in my loft that I've been searching for since the SNES mini was announced.

Reply
Nikki
21/3/2018 10:58:07 am

There was a Vectrex at the play expo that had a thoroughly dodgy joystick, too. I tried to play some pacman clone on it and thought that it was all a bit weird and rubbish. But it had a second, working joystick too, so I played the built in minefield game on that, and it felt just as futuristic and lovely as if I'd been seeing it in the 80s and thinking how futuristic and lovely it was.

Reply
darbotron
21/3/2018 03:34:27 pm

I've got a virtual boy Biffo, I love it but it rarely gets played on because it needs about 90 billion batteries (6 or maybe 8 actually I think) - you're more than welcome to have a borrow of it if you like. Dm me on the twitters or something.

Reply
Steve
21/3/2018 03:48:10 pm

I remember seeing the Vectrex in the shops at the time I had an Atari 2600, and being very young I didn't get the idea, and still don't see it. Vectors were technically impressive with games being true 3D and all that, but my childish mind never understood that they were 3D - they were just simple line drawings. Compare the cute colourful character of an Atari game like Keystone Capers, Pitfall (both Activision but you get the point), or even something like ET that was awful but still had a recognisable ET on the title screen or an FBI agent with a brown trenchcoat. Vectrex games all looked terrible to me when I saw them for 20 seconds each in the shop because... just a load of lines. I had no idea that 3D was a thing. Does that make sense?

Reply
Gary Mc link
22/3/2018 09:18:32 am

I got bought a Vectrex for Christmas I think 1982 was when it was bought from Woolworths.

It was the best games console I've ever had the pleasure to use, My favourite game on it (apart from Minestorm) was Scramble I played that for hours and hours. The game pad with the joystick was easily broken we went through at least 3. Mainly because of my brother and his mates using it when I was in bed they hammered it.

If they remade it for nostalgia reasons I think i'd find the money form somewhere to buy it.

Reply
Phil
22/3/2018 12:59:28 pm

I've been toying with the idea of buying a vextrex for a couple of years, not quite sure where I would put it though.
Have you looked at the homebrew scene? There's some cool stuff, vector pilot looks good.

Reply
Barrie link
23/3/2018 04:17:11 am

Well worth trying to get one of the multi-carts if you can. Release is a brilliant one-switch game if you can get that. Pedantry alert....

Don't think the Vectrex was first to have an analogue stick. I remember a friend having a Voltmace Database which had analogue sticks and looked Atari VCS generation. Made in Essex I believe. This looks very similar too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsJQLslLwtE - think a whole line of these in different shapes and sizes.

Also, re. 1982/83 great game crash... That was North America only though wasn't it? Obviously the rest of the world wasn't enough to prop up the company sadly.

Someone has recently posted a colour vectrex hack on YouTube (ArcadeJason I think). Anyway, great you finally got your hands on a good one. Lucky boy. :)

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    This section will not be visible in live published website. Below are your current settings:


    Current Number Of Columns are = 2

    Expand Posts Area =

    Gap/Space Between Posts = 12px

    Blog Post Style = card

    Use of custom card colors instead of default colors = 1

    Blog Post Card Background Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Shadow Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Border Color = current color

    Publish the website and visit your blog page to see the results

    Picture
    Support Me on Ko-fi
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    RSS Feed Widget
    Picture

    Picture
    Tweets by @mrbiffo
    Picture
    Follow us on The Facebook

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2022
    May 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014


    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ