dad (01/18/83)
I've had my Vectrex now for about 3 weeks and have been playing with it a lot. Having also played a lot of Colecovision in the past, I'll give my reactions to Vectrex, coming from the experience of a traditional home arcade type system. I'll assume that everyone is familiar with Vectrex's general appearance. Its a self contained unit with built in B/W CRT, vector refresh display system, and a control panel w/ 8 way joystick and 4 buttons. The control panel snaps into a slot in the Vectrex cabinet to completely hide/protect the panel during transportation. The Vectrex is very portable. You can pick it up and move it to the dining room table, a desk in the den, or almost anywhere else. It seemed particularly "at home" on my uncle's bar in the basement. It was almost like having a real coin-op system right there on the counter top. Anyway, I guess I totally underestimated the value of portability in a home arcade system. In this respect Vectrex can not be beat. I purchased 2 games cartridges for Vectrex: STAR TREK and BERZERK. My selection was based on a half hours worth of trying all 9 of the current games at my local store. Vectrex also comes equipped with a built in game called MINE STORM. I discuss each of these in turn below. MINE STORM: This game is somewhat similar to coin-op Asteroids. In the beginning of the game an alien space ship scatters "mine seeds" (dots) all over the dislay. Your Asteroids-like space ship is then placed in the center of the screen, perhaps right on top of one of the dots. You have about 2 seconds to THRUST your ship to a safer spot before 4 of the dots turn into "dumb" floating mines (deadly on contact). Mines come in 3 sizes. At the start of each round there are 4 large slow moving mines. When you shoot one of these two of the remaining "mine seeds" turn into medium sized faster moving mines. Each of these in turn produces two small sized, fast moving mines. Game controls are familiar: the joystick turns the ship smoothly clockwise or counter-clockwise, FIRE, THRUST, and HYPERSPACE (random relocation) buttons. When you've cleared the first wave of "dumb" mines, the alien space ship returns to offer you a new and greater challenge. Each successive wave increases in difficulty. In wave 2 you have both dumb and "fireball" mines - mines that shoot a piece of debris right at the ship when they explode. In wave 3 the magnetic mines are introduced - these come right for you. Wave 4 has magnetic fireball mines, etc. etc. There are 13 basic waves, after that the instruction book says you face the "space dust". I've got to tell you, after a couple hours of practice on MINE STORM your forget your playing a video game. The sharp, clean vector graphics (no vector stair stepping) start to look like pieces of glowing wire. You start to get the feeling that you are remotely controlling real objects on a low friction playing surface (like ice). This illusion is very strong. Your ship has inertia. You start to become incredable skilled at THRUSTing around and sliding on the playing field (in fact, you have to to get past wave 3). As a first exposure to Vectrex all I can say is WOW!! STAR TREK: This game is similar to a sit-down booth coin-op I played last summer. You are presented with the cockpit view as a space fighter pilot. A star filled sky (dots) serve as a background. Your engines hum away in the background. When you push the joystick to the left the star field pans to the right etc. to give the illusion of turning in 3D. All of a sudden, here they come - Klingons and Romulans. They streak across the sky starting about the size of a dot, smoothly growing in size until they wizz right past you. WOooo... the aliens fire what can best be described as spinning asterisks (*) at you. No problem, you can dodge the fire by turning away (joystick) or press the SHIELDS button to make yourself invulnerable for 1 second. If you get hit and your shields are up... BOOOING the spinning torpedo bounces smartly off you and fades away. If your shields are down... CCRACK, your windshield is cracked (like in coin-op Tank Battlezone) and you lose that ship (3 per game). At the bottom of the screen are two vectors that gauge your remaining shield energy and fire power. When either starts to get low you have to refuel at the space station. This is accomplished by aiming your ship's crosshair (always displayed in the middle of the screen) on the door of the spinning space station and pressing the LINK button. When you've successfully linked up, the space station sends you fuel under the illusion of 4 expanding vectors drawn from the center of the space station to the four corners of the screen. When your fuel gauges are full, the space station smoothly reduces in size to a dot, then disappears completely until all the aliens in this sector are eliminated (only one space station per sector so you really have to pace your fuel consumption). There are nine levels of play. Levels 1-2 are tame, 3-4 are challenging, and 5-8 are heart attack! You can only survive level 8 after becoming incredably skilled at using FIRE and SHIELDS, and after having developed a good sense of timing about refueling. In level 9 you face the "dreaded Klingon mothership" and there are no friendly space stations for extra fuel. Your can only destroy the mothership by shooting directly down it's photon canon, and only when it has just fired a new torpedo (*) at you. Gawd! There are some other items in the game I didn't mention, but I think I've covered all the important points of the game. Once again, Vectrex has created a strong illusion. In this case, the way objects grow and shrink in size gives one the illusion of depth in the CRT. I found myself rocking my head from side to side in an unconscious effort to see around all the stuff coming at me. Another comment- Vectrex is fast! The speed of the vector animation and game action in this case are phenomenal. The console joystick response is instantaneous, the action "real-time". The game speed is so fast in fact that its difficult to compare it with other home arcade systems. It is certainly a far cry from the controller response on Intellivision's "Space Spartans" game or even Colecovision's "Cosmic Avenger" or "Zaxxon". STAR TREK on the Vectrex is definetly "a take". BERZERK: Everyone should be familiar with this famous game so I spare the scenario. Berzerk on the Vectrex is exactly what you'd expect it to be. The game is a faithful recreation of the original coin-op (as far as I can tell). Its obvious that the Vectrex display hardware is just coasting along with this game, but that isn't a concern to the user - the enjoyment level is still high. Berzerk seems particularly appropriate when visiting friends and relatives come over. The game speed is slower than MINE STORM and STAR TREK (its interesting that you need a mix of games... some for the dedicated game fanatic, others for casual players). One point: Apparently some of the BERZERK cartridges have a software bug which causes the game score to occasionally go nuts. This happened to me. I called the toll-free California number and they told me to send it in for replacement. When you have a bad cartridge the problem occurs rarely. A word to the wise. -------------------------- Of the current Vectrex games out I think STAR TREK and BERZERK make excellent 1 or 2 player games. I've heard that SCRAMBLE is another, and that SPACE WAR is a great 2 player game (you need to buy the extra game console though). Anybody else out there have Vectrex? Please review your cartridges on the net. Don deCourcelle eisx!dad ABI - Piscataway N.J. PY2-J227 x2140