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History
The story of the Vectrex began in 1981 when four employees of Smith Engineering, the company behind the Microvision, went out for lunch and stopped by a surplus store named Electro-Mavin. The four were John Ross, Mike Purvis, Tom Sloper and Steve Markin. In the store, they found a 1-inch CRT monitor, which they bought and brought back to work. Along with Jay Smith, they started wondering what they could do with it. They first converted the CRT to make a demo of a vector-drawing CRT. From there, they wondered how to use their new technology. At the time, a few coin-operated machines used vector graphics, which led to the idea of developing a vector-based mini-arcade. Although vector graphics monitors were monochrome, they offered the possibility of zooming and rotating graphics very easily, a feature that no other home console had at the time.
After a while, the team had a crude prototype with a 5-inch screen. Dubbed the mini-arcade, the prototype was first presented to Kenner Toys. The company showed interest, but after some reflection it decided not to invest in the technology. Jay Smith brought the prototype back to work, and before he had time to pitch the idea to someone else, an opportunity presented itself. Less than a week after the refusal by Kenner Toys, Edward “Ed” Krakauer, president of General Consumer Electronics (GCE), stopped by Smith Engineering. Ed saw the prototype lying on the table and inquired about it. GCE already had Smith Engineering making watches for it and had total confidence in Jay’s ability to pull this off. Around the beginning of September, GCE was officially on board. In less than 10 months, Smith Engineering managed to build the final prototype while incorporating various GCE requests, including a larger screen.
GCE showed the Vectrex for the first time at the CES convention in June 1982, and it was officially released in November 1982.
Release
The initial sales of the Vectrex were very good, and GCE rapidly depleted its inventory. Milton Bradley (MB), which had opted out of the video game industry after the release of the Microvision, realized that it needed to be part of this multi-billion-dollar industry. It saw the Vectrex as a great opportunity and decided to acquire GCE. Along with the upcoming release of a voice-command unit for video games and home computers, the Vectrex helped double the stock price of Milton Bradley at the beginning of 1983 compared with its mid-1982 range.
Demise
Sadly, the crash of 1983 hit, and sales of the Vectrex began to plunge. A few weeks after acquiring GCE and beginning distribution across Canada, Europe and Japan, MB had to drop the price from $199 to $150 and then to $100. By the end of 1983, Milton Bradley had lost $16.5 million on the Vectrex. After a very difficult year, MB merged with Hasbro in May 1984 and quickly discontinued the Vectrex.
During that period, Smith Engineering was working on an updated version of the Vectrex with color capabilities. The first version of the Vectrex was monochrome, as a color version would have cost three times as much, since each color (red, green and blue) would have needed its own component. To limit the cost, Jay thought of using a second layer of phosphor and varying the voltage of the electron gun. A high voltage would light up the second layer, a low voltage would light up the first layer, and voltages in between would produce a variation depending on the intensity. The concept worked, but the time needed to switch between two colors was too long. In practice, a vector would end up with a gradient between the old color and the new color after each color change. Jay and his team were confident that a solution could be found, but the crash of 1983 and the discontinuation of the Vectrex put a stop to their work.
After the closing of GCE, Jay Smith reacquired the rights to the Vectrex, and in 1996 he released them into the public for non-profit use.
Peripherals
The Vectrex had very original peripherals:
- Light Pen: With the pen, the screen of the Vectrex gained “touch-screen” capability, which allowed the player to interact with the game simply by touching the screen with the device. Only 3 games were released for this device: AnimAction, Art Master and Melody Master.
- 3-D Imager: These were the first 3D glasses for a video game system. They worked by blocking one eye while a frame was drawn, then blocking the other eye and moving the frame to create a 3-dimensional effect.
Games
A total of 28 games were released for the Vectrex. The first 12 games were developed by Smith Engineering, while the last 17 were designed by GCE.
- 3D Crazy Coaster (1983) [Requires 3D Imager]
- 3D MineStorm (1983) [Requires 3D Imager]
- 3D Narrow Escape (1983) [Requires 3D Imager]
- AnimAction (1983) [Requires Light Pen]
- Armor Attack (1982)
- Art Master (1983) [Requires Light Pen]
- Bedlam (1982)
- Berzerk (1982)
- Blitz! (1982)
- Clean Sweep (1982)
- Cosmic Chasm (1982)
- Fortress of Narzod (1982)
- Heads Up (1983)
- Hyperchase Auto Race (1982)
- Melody Master (1983) [Requires Light Pen]
- MineStorm (1982)
- Polar Rescue (1983)
- Pole Position (1983)
- Rip-Off (1982)
- Scramble (1982)
- Solar Quest (1982)
- Space Wars (1982)
- Spike (1983)
- Spinball (1983)
- Star Castle (1983)
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1982)
- Starhawk (1982)
- Web Wars (1983)
Variations
- Mine Storm II is an updated version of the built-in Mine Storm game that corrects a game-ending bug on level 13. The game was available for free by mail on request. Very few of these actually exist.
- Mr. Boston is a variation of the Clean Sweep game that was exclusively available at the Mr. Boston chain of liquor stores in 1983. This game is the rarest of all Vectrex titles.