The Vectrex

The Vectrex was often called the "king of videogames". And this is not exaggerated. Its very different to most other video game systems of its generation.
The monitor is built-in, so the TV set is free to watch for the rest of the family while someone is playing. This was often a reason to prefer the Vectrex to any other video game system.
Also no other home system used vector graphics. Similar to some arcades of this time the graphics does not consist of dots - like on a TV - but is build from lines. The lines can be drawn with 256 different levels of brightness, but unfortunately its not possible to display colors (Thats impossible because there is no dot pitch / the lines are "drawn" directly on the screen).
To mimic at least some colors every game has its special colored overlay, that is to be put in front of the screen.
The joystick is self-centering and has 4 buttons. The game "Minestorm" (An Asteroids Clone) is already build into the Vectrex.

The Vectrex was published in the U.S.A. in 1982 and later in Europe and Japan. Unfortunately its production was stopped in 1984. There are three different versions of the Vectrex available

from GCE (General Consumer Electronics)from MB (Milton Bradley)
from Bandai

GCE was the inventor of the Vectrex but was bought later by MB. Thats why the Vectrex is ditributed in Europe by MB. The "MB-Version" needs a 220V power supply and has the european version of the Vectrex logo printed on it. The GCE Vectrex was sold in the U.S.A. (and in Japan?). An interesting fact is that the Bandai version of the Vectrex is apparently even in Japan very rare.

More than 30 games were released for the vectrex and even Accessories like a lightgun or a lightpen. The cartridges conatined either 4 or 8 KByte ROMs.
Some years ago MB made it totally legal to copy the old Vectrex games, so you now can emulate the Vectrex or make copies from the old ROMs to e.g. EPROMs. Even nowadays new Vectrex games are released by guys who made these games in their spare-time.

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