Vectrex
The Vectrex is a unique vector display-based home video game console developed by Smith Engineering. It was first released for the North America market in November 1982 and then Europe and Japan in 1983. Originally manufactured by General Consumer Electronics, it was later licensed to Milton Bradley after they acquired the company. Bandai released the system in Japan.
The Vectrex, in contrast to other video-game systems available at the time, featured an integrated monochrome CRT monitor and did not need to be hooked up to a television set. A detachable wired control pad was mounted at, and could be folded into, the lower base of the console. Games included translucent color sheet overlays that could be placed over the monochrome screen. A number of peripherals were produced, such as a pair of 3D goggles known as the "3D Imager" and a "light-pen" that allowed the player to draw directly on the screen. A built-in game, Mine Storm, was playable without inserting a cartridge.
The console was originally conceived by John Ross, an employee at Smith Engineering, in late 1980, as a way to clear out excess inventory of 1-inch monitors. The console became Smith's first foray into the home game market. It was at first conceived as a handheld system called the "Mini Arcade". Once the prototype was completed, it was presented to General Consumer Electronics, who agreed to manufacture the console. Strong initial sales caused General Consumer Electronics to be acquired by Milton Bradley. The Vectrex was a victim of the video game crash of 1983, and was discontinued shortly after Milton Bradley's acquisition by Hasbro.
Despite its commercial failure, the Vectrex was highly praised for its software library, graphical capabilities and built-in monitor; several publications lauded it as one of the best home consoles available at the time. The Vectrex was the first video game console to have a 3D-based peripheral. In later years, the system gained a cult following, with many releasing homebrew software for it. A colorized handheld version of the Vectrex was conceived in the late 1980s, but was shelved due to its manufacturing cost and the success of the Nintendo Game Boy.
History
The Vectrex was conceived by John Ross of Smith Engineering in late 1980. He, Mike Purvis, Tom Sloper, and Steve Marking had gone to Electro-Mavin, a surplus warehouse in Los Angeles. They found a 1-inch cathode ray tube and wondered if a small electronic game could be made of it. A demonstration of a vector-drawing cathode ray tube display was made by connecting the deflection yoke in a standard television to the channels of a stereo amplifier fed with music program material. An auxiliary yoke was used to keep the raster television's horizontal fly-back high-voltage system running. The demo led to a system originally conceived as a handheld called the Mini Arcade but, as Smith Engineering shopped the idea around to developers, it evolved into a tabletop with nine-inch screen.The system was licensed to General Consumer Electronics in 1981. After a brief hardware and software development period, the Vectrex was unveiled on 7 June 1982 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It was publicly released in November, just in time for the holidays. The launch sales were strong enough that Milton Bradley bought out General Consumer Electronics in early 1983.
Milton Bradley's greater resources allowed the Vectrex to be released in parts of Europe by mid-1983 and, through a co-branding agreement with Bandai, in Japan as well. However, the video game crash of 1983 turned Milton Bradley's support of the Vectrex into a costly mistake. In May 1984, Milton Bradley merged with Hasbro, and the Vectrex was discontinued a few months after. Over its lifetime, it had cost Milton Bradley tens of millions of dollars.
Prior to the Vectrex's discontinuation, a successor console with a color screen had been planned. After the rights reverted to Smith Engineering, the company made plans to revive the Vectrex as a handheld, but the imminent arrival of Nintendo's Game Boy put an end to those plans. In the mid-1990s, Jay Smith, then head of Smith Engineering, allowed new hardware and software development on a fee- and royalty-free basis. Smith has also allowed duplication of the original Vectrex software on a not-for-profit basis to allow Vectrex owners to obtain the original titles at low cost or for free.
Technical specifications
Circuit board
- CPU: Motorola 68A09 @ 1.5 MHz
- RAM: 1 KB
- ROM: 8 KB
- Cartridge ROM: 32 KB
- MOS 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter
Sound
- Sound: General Instrument AY-3-8912
- MCU controlled sound
- 3-inch electrodynamic paper cone speaker
Design
The cathode ray tube is a Samsung model 240RB40 monochrome unit measuring 9 × 11 inches, displaying a picture of 240 mm diagonal; it is an off-the-shelf picture tube manufactured for small black/white television sets. The brightness of the CRT is controlled using a circular knob on the back of the display. A vector CRT display such as the one in the Vectrex does not require a special tube, and differs from standard raster-based television sets only in the control circuits. Rather than use sawtooth waves to direct the internal electron beam in a raster pattern, computer-controlled integrators feed linear amplifiers to drive the deflection yoke. This yoke has similar, if not identical inductances, unlike a TV deflection yoke. The yoke uses a standard TV core. The high-voltage transformer also uses a standard core and bobbin. There is special circuitry to turn off the electron beam if the vector generator stops or fails. This prevents burning of the screen's phosphors. This design is a great deal smaller than the electronics found in the free-standing, full-sized Asteroids.
During development, for a short period of time, the possibility of using the 6502 processor was considered, but later its performance was considered insufficient.
Early units have a very audible "buzzing" from the built-in speaker that reacts to the graphics generated on screen. This is due to improper production grounding of signal lines of the low-level audio circuitry, and was eventually resolved in later production models. A "ground loop" had been created by a grounding strap added in production to meet U.S. Federal Communications Commission signal radiation requirements. This idiosyncrasy has become a familiar characteristic of the machine.
Peripherals
The 3-D Imager, invented by John Ross, turns the 2-D black-and-white images drawn by the Vectrex into a color 3-D experience. The imager works by spinning a disk in front of the viewer's eyes. The disk is black for 180 degrees and in some cases has 60 degree wedges of transparent red, green, and blue filters. The user looks through this to the Vectrex screen. The Vectrex synchronizes the rotation of the disk to the software frame rate as it draws 6 screens: with the right eye covered: the left eye red image, then green, and then the blue image is drawn... and then, while the left eye is covered by the black 180-degree sector: the right eye red, green, and then the blue image is drawn. Only one eye will see the Vectrex screen and its 3 associated images at any one time while the other will be blocked by the 180-degree mask. The prototype was made in the plastic casework of a Viewmaster. The disc spins freely and is driven by a motor. The Vectrex software generates its own frame-rate and compares it to an index signal from the glasses once per revolution. Score is kept of how many wheel rotations are early compared to the software frame rate, and how many are late. The software tries to keep these two trends equal by adjusting the power being delivered to the motor that spins the filter and mask wheel. Pulse Width Modulation is used to control the motor speed: the ratio of the "on" time versus the "off" time of a rapid stream of power pulses to the motor. In this way the software synchronizes the wheel rotation to the software's frame rate, or drawing time, for the combined and repeating group of up to 6 evolving images.A single object that does not lie on the plane of the monitor is drawn at least twice to provide information for each eye. The distance between the duplicate images and the angles from which they are drawn will determine where the object will appear to "be" in 3-D space. The 3-D illusion is also enhanced by adjusting the brightness of the object. Spinning the disk at a high enough speed will fool the viewer's eyes/brain into thinking that the multiple images it is seeing are two different views of the same object due to the persistence of vision. This creates the impression of 3-D and color.
The same 3-D effect is in fact possible with raster or film-projection images, and the shutter glasses used in some 3-D theaters and virtual reality theme park rides work on the same principle.
The light pen allows the user to "draw", to create images and to indicate, on the screen. It has a photo-detector that can see the bright spot of the vector-drawing display monitor when it goes by under the light pen's position where it is being held to the screen. The photo-detector feeds internal pulse-catching circuits that tell the Vectrex and its software of the event. The prototype was made in the plastic casework of a Marks-A-Lot felt-tipped marker pen. The Vectrex draws a spider-web-like search-pattern to track the pen's location. The software changes the pattern size as the pen changes motions and velocity in an attempt keep a continuous lock on the pen's position. The Vectrex light pen was invented by John Ross.
Screen overlays
In order to enhance the display visuals of the Vectrex, every commercially released game included its own unique translucent plastic screen overlay that accompanied the cartridge. Instead of physically touching the CRT screen, four tabs on the Vectrex console securely held them in place in front of it, with a sizable gap between the actual screen and the overlay. Made up of one to three colors for the play field area, these overlays provide the illusion of simple color graphics, helped reduced glare, flicker and gave the appearance of a flat screen. They also allowed changes in brightness intensity of vector graphics to be more visually distinctive. In some cases game designers created pseudo color cycling effects, for a sense of movement, by using alternating colored patterns. In addition to players' score areas, some overlays also contained additional artwork and patterns, to add to the game's play field. Across the bottom of each overlay are game-specific joystick and button functions as a guide for the player. Each overlay also displayed the title and logo of each game, along with a colored border or design, to add cosmetic flair to the Vectrex. Overlays were not required, but added to the experience in terms of the visual look of game graphics and the overall display appearance of the console.Software
Some of the Vectrex's library consisted of ports of arcade hits, most of them brought to the console through a licensing deal with Cinematronics.The liquor company Old Mr. Boston gave out a limited number of customized Clean Sweep cartridges, with a Mr. Boston sticker on the box. The overlay was the regular Clean Sweep overlay with the Mr. Boston name, logo, and copyright info running up either side. The game itself had custom text, and the player controlled a top hat rather than a vacuum. Clean Sweep was written by Richard Moszkowski.