Vectrex in 2019
"But do you have a Vectrex?"
When someone learns that I'm a retro game enthusiast and have meticulously collected nearly every post-crash video game console released in the United States, more often than not someone carrying around a nugget of trivia that Vectrex is a rare console, despite the fact that they often don't even know what it is, will ask me about it and I'll have to admit, that no, I don't have a Vectrex. It doesn't matter that Vectrex is pre-crash and I don't really collect pre-crash - I also don't have Pong, an Odyssey, a Commodore 64, an Atari 5200, or an Atari 7800 either, but those never come up. What always comes up is the Vectrex.Twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to buy a Vectrex from a now-defunct local used game retailer for around $100. At the time I didn't know anything about the Vectrex and the awful buzzing noise the entire time it was switched on made me think something was seriously wrong with it so I passed. Come to find out that's perfectly normal operation.
About a month ago, a friend of mine who was anxiously awaiting pre-orders for a GDEMU asked me what the heck a "Doc Brown" was which lead to a conversation about the FM Towns Marty. He asked me if I had one of those and I told him that I did not, but I did have an FM Towns 20F PC which can play any of the games the Marty can and then some. He wondered out loud if there were any consoles that I didn't have and this time it was I who volunteered that a Vectrex was noticeably absent from my collection.
Well, I finally went and did it - I bought a Vectrex. I thought it would be fun to describe my experience with it and what I've learned so far.
Buying A Vectrex
I'm sure there are other places for those in the know to get a Vectrex, but for me Ebay was my only realistic avenue. At any given point there are always plenty of Vectrex consoles available and the price range varies pretty wildly. $300 to $350 seems to be normal for a fully functional console with a fully functional controller, add about $50 to $75 for one with a box, maybe another $100 for one with a box in good shape. Of course there are always plenty of listings from people pricing the consoles into the stratosphere but if you spend any appreciable amount of time browsing on Ebay you'll learn to mentally filter those out.
Saving the Box
I managed to get one with a ratty box and about 3 original cartridges for a reasonable price. According to the seller, he had gotten it new when he was a kid. He was well meaning and pleasant to talk to but he definitely wasn't a collector and didn't really understand our ways. When he packed the box for shipping, he used shipping tape on the console box to keep it shut. It took me 30 minutes of carefully peeling the tape off with a hair dryer to remove it all without causing additional damage. The box was perfectly dry but had clearly been stored somewhere damp for a long period of time because the heat from the hair dryer filled the room with the smell of decades-old mildew. Fungus and my body don't get along so well so this did a number on my lungs for a week or so.
The Vectrex box was in pretty bad shape to begin with, but I still wanted to make every effort to preserve it. The styrofoam was washable with soap and water, but the box was another story. After confirming that there wasn't any actual mold or mildew growing on it - just some obvious discoloration from water stains, I put the box in a big trash bag and left it outside in -20F over night to kill off anything else that might be clinging to life on it. Then in the morning I smoked the box inside and out with myrrh. It doesn't leave a visible residue unless you overdo it. It has a pleasant smell and it's anti-microbial so it should have killed off any mildew that was still trying to cling to life.
One of the flaps of the box had been torn off, and about a 4-inch section of the print from front of the box had been torn off with it - most of the "Vectrex" logo was missing.
In searching for a solution to "repair" the box, I came across this thread:
To summarize, someone was trying to make their own reproduction box for the Vectrex console and asked for help with box dimensions and so forth. Someone was kind enough to take a pristine box and provide measurements for all of its dimensions. The original poster also followed up with the image files he ultimately used to print the new cover for the box. I was able to use those image files and measurements of the actual box to print a new Vectrex logo onto a sheet of sticker paper and apply it over top of the box where the logo was missing. I was also able to make a replacement flap from a box in my recycle pile, and print a cover for the flap as well. It's far from perfect, but it's good enough for my needs.
Impressions of the Console
Unlike a traditional game console which requires an external display like a television or monitor, the Vectrex is self-contained and has its own built-in black and white monitor. Although it pre-dates the Apple Macintosh by several years, the original Mac is probably the closest thing it can be compared with which most people will recognize.
Unlike a traditional CRT which is configured for "raster" graphics, the Vectrex monitor is configured for vector graphics (thus the name of the console). This CRT type is also sometimes referred to as an XY monitor because of the way it receives signals. Instead of drawing a picture on the screen with dots in a series of horizontal lines, a vector monitor moves the electron beam in direct lines from one x/y coordinate to another. Rather than being made from a grid of pixels, vector objects are made from clean lines making them appear much sharper and more detailed than anything drawn on a raster-based CRT. Most of the lines are perfectly straight, but I've seen one or two games cleverly bend and curve the lines as well.
The controller is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. It consists of a fully analog joystick and 4 buttons. The analog stick is impressively accurate (in my experience), though from what I understand it's even more accurate when two joysticks are plugged in together. It *looks* like both controllers share a common ground port and without both plugged in, it's left floating. (I could be mistaken - I didn't really study the phenomenon in too much depth). One of the coolest things is the way the controller latches into the front of the console and folds into it for storage.
The Vectrex console also has a single built-in game. When the console is powered up without a cartridge installed it loads a game called "MineStorm". MineStorm is essentially an Asteroids clone that serves as a pretty decent tech demo, showing off scaling and a good number of on-screen objects. It's also a lot of fun.
Lastly, the monitor is monochromatic (a.k.a. black & white). A color vector monitor would have, no doubt, been too expensive to include. Their solution: place colored translucent overlays in front of the screen. It sounds cheap and gimmicky, but I have to say that it actually works pretty well.
About Overlays:
The overlays aren't strictly required to enjoy the games, but they often function like arcade marquees - not just tinting the screen with colors but providing a handy reference for what each button on the controller does. Of course, there are options for getting reproduction overlays - more than I'll try to list here, but as of the writing of this article one of the most reasonable seems to be this seller on Ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/usr/retrosounds2013
Pole Position is particularly interesting in that it featured curved lines for the edges of the road where most other vector games consist exclusively of straight lines.
Clean Sweep is a blatant Pac-Man clone where you control a money/treasure sac instead of Pac-Man and it adds a dimension of challenge in that the sack will fill up and you have to return to the center of the field to empty it before continuing to gobble up coins/pellets.
Is it worth the price of admission? If you grew up with one, or fantasized about one as a kid, maybe so. For myself I'd have to reluctantly answer "no". You're unlikely to be able to obtain a working Vectrex and decent games for less than $400, and I can think of a lot of better ways to spend that amount, nostalgic or otherwise. I think my personal investment sits somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 all told for a boxed console, modding/restoration parts, a light pen, a 3D imager and a multi-cart.
I think it's perfect for someone who entertains a lot of guests. Setting it up basically involves plugging in the power and placing the console on top of a table or counter, so it's easy to bust out when you're planning a get-together. The console is rare and interesting enough to function as an interactive conversation piece.
Unlike a traditional CRT which is configured for "raster" graphics, the Vectrex monitor is configured for vector graphics (thus the name of the console). This CRT type is also sometimes referred to as an XY monitor because of the way it receives signals. Instead of drawing a picture on the screen with dots in a series of horizontal lines, a vector monitor moves the electron beam in direct lines from one x/y coordinate to another. Rather than being made from a grid of pixels, vector objects are made from clean lines making them appear much sharper and more detailed than anything drawn on a raster-based CRT. Most of the lines are perfectly straight, but I've seen one or two games cleverly bend and curve the lines as well.
The controller is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. It consists of a fully analog joystick and 4 buttons. The analog stick is impressively accurate (in my experience), though from what I understand it's even more accurate when two joysticks are plugged in together. It *looks* like both controllers share a common ground port and without both plugged in, it's left floating. (I could be mistaken - I didn't really study the phenomenon in too much depth). One of the coolest things is the way the controller latches into the front of the console and folds into it for storage.
The Vectrex console also has a single built-in game. When the console is powered up without a cartridge installed it loads a game called "MineStorm". MineStorm is essentially an Asteroids clone that serves as a pretty decent tech demo, showing off scaling and a good number of on-screen objects. It's also a lot of fun.
Lastly, the monitor is monochromatic (a.k.a. black & white). A color vector monitor would have, no doubt, been too expensive to include. Their solution: place colored translucent overlays in front of the screen. It sounds cheap and gimmicky, but I have to say that it actually works pretty well.
Giving the Vectrex a Tune-Up
For a 37 year old console, the Vectrex worked pretty well as-is when I received it. The volume knob was a little scratchy, and of course the console made a constant buzzing noise. The buzz is, unfortunately, normal function for a Vectrex - it's a design flaw rather than a failure. As far as the monitor, the purity (the squareness of the overall image) seemed a little off - nothing drastic, and arguably within an acceptable margin. Sometimes as capacitors age CRTs will start to drift out of calibration so I took the opportunity to do a complete internal cleaning, re-cap and see what could be done about that buzzing.
Inside the Vectrex are a logic board, a power board, a transformer block and a CRT. Predictably the insides of the console were covered in a thick compacted layer of dust.
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| The Vectrex logic board covered in 37 years of gritty dust. |
Read anything about working on or around CRTs and you'll know that they're essentially gigantic glass capacitors that will happily discharge lethal amounts of electricity through you if you don't show them the proper respect. In order to completely tear down the Vectrex among other things it's necessary to disconnect the anode cap. To do that safely, most people recommend wiring a screwdriver the chassis ground and carefully pushing the blade of the screwdriver up under the anode cap until it makes contact with the anode. There are plenty of videos on YouTube explaining the process (it's essentially the same thing regardless of the CRT you're using). The one thing they don't tell you is once it's discharged how you get the anode cap physically disconnected from the CRT. There are evidently lots of different styles of connector - even among variations of the Vectrex. The one on my particular Vectrex looked different from the ones in the videos I found. Mine consisted of two back-to-back "L" shaped prongs that needed to be pinched together to unhitch them.
Getting the rest of the Vectrex apart requires not only a screwdriver, but also a soldering iron to disconnect the power wires between the logic board and power board and clippers to cut the zip ties fastening the CRT neck board and the ferrite core on the power wires coming from the transformer block. If you're going to disassemble a Vectrex, it's probably a good idea to have some zip ties on hand first and take pictures before you remove the old ones so you can replace them properly during reassembly - the ferrite core is particularly tricky to get back into its exact original position, and you have to get it back in it's original position to get the Vectrex to go back together. Just trust me and take pictures.
Once I had the console disassembled, I used an air compressor to blow as much of the dust off the boards as possible, then cleaned them the rest of the way with static-free brushes. After the boards were pretty much free of dust and fluff, I gave the logic board a shot of Deoxit. Most of the IC's are socketed so it's possible for oxidation to creep in and interfere with connections. My thinking was if the Deoxit can get in-between the IC legs and the sockets, then the Deoxit was helping, if it couldn't get in-between then it wasn't hurting anything.
Getting some of the larger power capacitors off of the power board without causing damage was a bit challenging as large portions of the ground plain of the power PCB had separated and bubbled up like bad paint. The large capacitors are fixed to the PCB with glue as well as solder so I used a hot air station to heat the glue while de-soldering the capacitor legs. With a little patience I managed to get all of the old capacitors off without causing any damage.
Getting some of the larger power capacitors off of the power board without causing damage was a bit challenging as large portions of the ground plain of the power PCB had separated and bubbled up like bad paint. The large capacitors are fixed to the PCB with glue as well as solder so I used a hot air station to heat the glue while de-soldering the capacitor legs. With a little patience I managed to get all of the old capacitors off without causing any damage.
After installing the new capacitors (which I purchased as a kit from Console5.com) I also replaced thermal grease on the power board heat sink with Arctic Silver.
In addition to replacing the electrolytic capacitors, I also replaced the styrene integrator capacitors with modern equivalents (which I also purchased as a kit from Console5.com), de-soldered the power-volume potentiometer to clean it out with Deoxit and pack some dielectric grease into the wiper, and finished it off by installing a "Buzz-Off" kit (purchased from this seller on Ebay) to eliminate about 97% of the buzzing noise that is part of the original flawed design.
With the whole thing cleaned, recapped and reassembled I fired it up. The improvement made by replacing the capacitors and cleaning was marginal. Old though they were, those original capacitors must have been pretty high quality because they were still working fine. Volume was no longer scratchy and the vectors were perhaps just a hair cleaner. With the capacitors no longer a factor, it was time to try to dial everything in.
I found a good reference for adjusting the internal potentiometers here and the centering rings here:
http://vectorgaming.proboards.com/thread/1705/tutorial-vectrex-adjustment
The multi-cart I purchased (detailed below) had a test cart program which draws test patterns for making the adjustments easier.
But after turning all the knobs I came to the conclusion that even after 37 years, the factory settings were still pretty much spot on so all of the pots ended up pretty much back where they started, however the centering rings did need a little tweaking. The purity issue I mentioned where the screen isn't 100% square requires the adjustment of magnets around the CRT, but the factory magnets were solidly glued in place so it just wasn't worth messing with.
With the whole thing cleaned, recapped and reassembled I fired it up. The improvement made by replacing the capacitors and cleaning was marginal. Old though they were, those original capacitors must have been pretty high quality because they were still working fine. Volume was no longer scratchy and the vectors were perhaps just a hair cleaner. With the capacitors no longer a factor, it was time to try to dial everything in.
I found a good reference for adjusting the internal potentiometers here and the centering rings here:
http://vectorgaming.proboards.com/thread/1705/tutorial-vectrex-adjustment
The multi-cart I purchased (detailed below) had a test cart program which draws test patterns for making the adjustments easier.
But after turning all the knobs I came to the conclusion that even after 37 years, the factory settings were still pretty much spot on so all of the pots ended up pretty much back where they started, however the centering rings did need a little tweaking. The purity issue I mentioned where the screen isn't 100% square requires the adjustment of magnets around the CRT, but the factory magnets were solidly glued in place so it just wasn't worth messing with.
Available Games
The list of officially released Vectrex games is pretty short, and there are a handful of different multi-game cartridges available which contain most or all of the official games as well as nearly as many or more unreleased prototypes and homebrew titles. A lot of these multi-carts are old news in 2019 and are no longer being made, but there are at least a couple of people still producing and occasionally updating them.
So your options for getting games are basically Ebay for the originals, or going to one of a couple places for multi-carts. One advantage of going with the original games is that you can very often get the corresponding color overlay for that game.
Multi-Cart Options:
So your options for getting games are basically Ebay for the originals, or going to one of a couple places for multi-carts. One advantage of going with the original games is that you can very often get the corresponding color overlay for that game.
Multi-Cart Options:
Probably the most well-know is Sean Kelly:
Madtronix also sells two different varieties of multi-cart, each one a little cheaper than Sean Kelly's, but notably includes the one officially released game Sean Kelly does not - Animaction:
About Overlays:
The overlays aren't strictly required to enjoy the games, but they often function like arcade marquees - not just tinting the screen with colors but providing a handy reference for what each button on the controller does. Of course, there are options for getting reproduction overlays - more than I'll try to list here, but as of the writing of this article one of the most reasonable seems to be this seller on Ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/usr/retrosounds2013
Accessories
For only being produced for about two years, the Vectrex was a pretty innovative console and wasn't content to just make games that could be enjoyed with the controller. Just having a multi-cart isn't enough to allow you to enjoy the entire small library of official releases. For that you'll need a couple of accessories.
Light Pen
The Light Pen accessory is basically a stylus for your Vectrex, allowing you monitor to function somewhat like a touch screen. This can be used to draw on the screen, and as an additional form of player input. The original light pens are pretty rare and relatively expensive but the technology is simple enough that you can make one yourself with some easily available parts, or if you'd prefer not to go the DIY route, there are a few people who will happily sell you one.
DIY
Madtronix
3D Imager
Not only does it produce a 3D effect, the 3D Imager also colorizes the images on screen. The 3D effect works on a similar principle to active shutter glasses. The player wears a pair of goggles with a spinning disc fitted in front of their eyes. The disc is half transparent, half opaque - so just like active shutter glasses do with LCDs, when the image for the right eye is being drawn on the screen, the left eye is being blocked, and vice-versa so each eye sees a different, offset image. The colorizing effect is very similar to the color wheel of a DLP projector - the transparent portion of the disc has colored areas and synchronizes the drawing of specific lines with when that color is in front of the player's eyes.
There's a great overview and review of the Imager here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCQ-L12g8c4&t=607s
The "3D Imager" is worth more than the console itself. When you can find one, they seem to be priced between $500 and $1000 and those are real prices not wishful thinking like the sellers trying to get $1000 for a broken Vectrex. However, thanks to a very enthusiastic and capable fan base, there is a reproduction available that will let you experience those 3D games much more affordably:
Madtronix 3D Imager
I really enjoyed reading about how he came up with the design for the reproduction 3D imager:
A note about ordering from Madtronix: this is boutique vintage gaming equipment. The guy who makes this stuff is a talented and thoughtful engineer but not necessarily great at the e-commerce side of things. Things took considerably longer to arrive than initially promised and communication was inconsistent to say the least, but the products he sells are awesome and well worth the wait.
Playing Games on Vectrex
So with my Vectrex cleaned and re-capped, a Madtronix Light Pen, a Madtronix 3D Imager and a Madtronix "Classic" multi-cart, I decided to sit down and work my way through the Vectrex library.
Light Pen Games:
I tried the light pen games Animaction and Art Master first as I found the whole idea fascinating. I had trouble getting the pen to work at first and started to worry that it might have been defective, but after reading one of the light pen game manuals online, I realized that I had the brightness on my monitor way too low. The advice from the manual is to turn the brightness all the way up until you see a bright dot in the center of the screen, then back it down just until that dot disappears. For normal use that feels way too bright to me, but when I did this the pen started working normally, so I turned the brightness up for the pen and back down for everything else. After I got it working, the novelty of the light pen wore off pretty quickly.
3D Games:
As pricey as the 3D imager is, I would have expected there to be more games that used it, but there are really only 3 official titles.
The 3D Minestorm game changes the Minestorm formula a bit. It increases the fidelity and animation of the "mines" you have to destroy at the cost of fewer objects on screen. The 3D effect is interesting but not really essential to the process. The Minestorm/Asterioids gameplay is compelling enough by itself that it is a really fun game despite 3D not adding much to the experience.
3D Crazy Coaster is evidently a roller-coaster simulation of some kind, but gameplay is not intuitive and while hurdling to your death by presumably falling off of a roller coaster is good for a couple of laughs, the game didn't really offer a compelling reason for me to put any more time into figuring out how it's supposed to be played.
3D Narrow Escape was the real gem in this collection. One of my fondest early childhood memories was discovering the original vector-based Star Wars Arcade game, and while it is nowhere near as kinetic or impressive, Narrow Escape makes great use of the 3D effect to deliver an experience that is vaguely reminiscent of Star Wars Arcade. Though the gameplay itself reminds me more of Hal's Hyper Zone on the SNES, Narrow Escape kept me playing for considerably longer than the others.
The Rest of the Games:
I should probably have taken notes as a parsed through the list, but instead I'm just going to give my impressions of the library and maybe mention what were the stand-out titles to me. With so few games I was a tiny bit disappointed at how many games are basically just Minestorm - in addition to Minestorm II and Minestorm 3D, there's also like Space Wars and Solar Quest which were essentially minor variations Minestorm. I suppose in fairness the same could be said of modern Battle Royale games, but I know this much: if I was a kid and saved up all my pennies to buy a new game and wound up with Space Wars, I would feel pretty ripped off considering it's nearly identical to the one game that every Vectrex owner already has.
Pole Position is particularly interesting in that it featured curved lines for the edges of the road where most other vector games consist exclusively of straight lines.
Clean Sweep is a blatant Pac-Man clone where you control a money/treasure sac instead of Pac-Man and it adds a dimension of challenge in that the sack will fill up and you have to return to the center of the field to empty it before continuing to gobble up coins/pellets.
Rip Off is ironically the one Minestorm-like title that actually adds enough of a twist that I wouldn't call it a rip-off. Your ship controls and shoots basically the same as in Minestorm, but instead of trying to blow up "mines" you have to blow up the critters before they can fly off with the goodies in your pile of important objects.
Scramble is a thoroughly enjoyable side-scrolling SHMUP with a non-coincidental similarity to Gradius. Developed and released by Konami 4 years prior to Gradius, Scramble is clearly Gradius's big brother. Easily one of the best games on the system.
Armor Attack is essentially a very refined take on Combat for the Atari VCS only a lot more fun. Very tight controls and very entertaining. Shooting a tank once will break its tracks but it can still shoot at you for a while from a stationary position unless you hit it again. I found myself playing this one for quite a while.
Berzerk is a fun port of the arcade game, but I can't help but be a little disappointed that the awesome voice synthesis wasn't included. The game "Spike" proves that the Vetrex is more than capable of voice support, and indeed a "homebrew" hack of Berzerk called "Verzerk" exists which restores this functionality.
Spike is a very unique spin on the Donkey Kong formula, taking advantage of the Vectrex's ability to scale objects to present a diagonal perspective of the playing field. It's a single-screen platformer - and pretty much the only platformer on the Vectrex.
Fortress of Narzod is a great take on the Space Invaders formula. Instead of shooting enemies in an largely open field, you attempt to shoot at them while hemmed in by a canyon. Your shots bounce off the walls and if done correctly the ricochet can be used to hit enemies around corners.
Dark Tower - finished in 1983 but never commercially released, Dark Tower is the lone "Adventure" game on the Vectrex. It makes full use of the the Vectrex scaling to give you a third-person over-shoulder view of walking around the landscape - very reminiscent of Drakkhen on SNES.
Conclusions
The Vectrex definitely offers a unique experience. Advancements in the resolution of modern displays are making it more and more possible to accurately simulate the look of vector graphics on fixed-pixel displays, but for ease of use nothing can beat the real thing just yet. The Vectrex was definitely ahead of its time, and I have to think it would have lived a longer and fuller life had Atari not destroyed the video game market in the early 1980's. I can't really claim nostalgia for something I was unaware of in my youth, but I can say that I think I get the enthusiasm behind the Vectrex community. This console had so much potential, and lived up to a good deal of it in its short life. It's exciting to think of what could have happened if it had kept going.Is it worth the price of admission? If you grew up with one, or fantasized about one as a kid, maybe so. For myself I'd have to reluctantly answer "no". You're unlikely to be able to obtain a working Vectrex and decent games for less than $400, and I can think of a lot of better ways to spend that amount, nostalgic or otherwise. I think my personal investment sits somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 all told for a boxed console, modding/restoration parts, a light pen, a 3D imager and a multi-cart.
I think it's perfect for someone who entertains a lot of guests. Setting it up basically involves plugging in the power and placing the console on top of a table or counter, so it's easy to bust out when you're planning a get-together. The console is rare and interesting enough to function as an interactive conversation piece.
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