Vectrex

I finally got my hands on a Vectrex via ebay complete with 12 games, manuals, and overlays. My neighbor had one of these when I was a kid, and I've seriously been lusting after it ever since. I spent many hours playing Scramble and Star Trek on one of these in my youth.

The Vectrex has to be one of the most unique early 80s game systems. It's a vector graphics based console that came with its own CRT monitor. It had one built-in game (Minestorm) and a cartridge slot for purchased games. The screen displayed black and white vector graphics but used transparent overlays that were placed on the screen to add color and other graphical elements. In my opinion, it remains the best way to recreate vector graphics arcade games at home. Emulation is great, but nothing can beat seeing these graphics on a CRT.

Here is the system I acquired:





My camera's autofocus had a hell of a time dealing with the CRT's refresh rate. It tended to snap some trippy pictures. Here is the cleanest picture I could snap of Minestorm in action:





Here is one of the trippier interpretations my camera made of Minestorm:




If you are a fan of vector graphics, but are unfamiliar with the vectrex, you owe yourself a peek at the following video from Classic Game Room:




Here is a great retrospective video of several classic Vectrex games. This video is done via an emulator and I'll think you'll see that quite a bit of sparkle is missing. It's still cool nonetheless.





Finally, just to prove that the Vectrex was the shizzle back in the day: