Retro Gaming Hacks

Find, Fix, Play, and Emulate the Vectrex

Play real vector graphics arcade games, right in your own home.

The Vectrex is one of the “holy grails” of classic video game collectors, the centerpiece of any collection. Not bad for a system that was an abject market failure as soon as it hit store shelves in 1982, finding itself in the clearance bins just a year later. Released by a company called GCE or General Consumer Electronics (that was swiftly purchased by Milton Bradley during the age when every toy, movie, and candy manufacturer wanted to get a finger into the video games pie), the Vectrex was the first and only home console to use a vector graphics display.

Vector graphics were already all the rage in arcades, having been used for such popular games as Asteroids and Battlezone. Vector graphic displays produced sharper, cleaner graphics because the beam in the monitor would draw the images based on specific sets of X/Y coordinates (i.e., vectors).

Atari’s home versions of their vector games for the 2600, although they may have replicated the gameplay, couldn’t have replicated the graphics because home systems that hook up to a television set all use raster graphics, drawn by a beam that scans horizontally across each row of pixels, from the top down.

But the Vectrex included its own built-in vector monitor, so it didn’t need to be hooked up to a TV. Thus, it was marketed as portable, although its heaviness and large size (and requirement of a wall socket to plug into) probably ...