Popular games for platform Vectrex

The very first racing game with the rear perspective camera and track based on real life.

The player controls an aircraft, referred to in the game as a "Jet," and has to guide it across a scrolling terrain, battling obstacles along the way. The ship is armed with a forward-firing weapon and bombs; each weapon has its own button. The player must avoid colliding with the terrain and other enemies, while simultaneously maintaining its limited fuel supply which diminishes over time. More fuel can be acquired by destroying fuel tanks in the game. The game is divided into six sections, each with a different style of terrain and different obstacles. There is no intermission between each section; the game simply scrolls into the new terrain. Points are awarded based upon the number of seconds of being alive, and on destroying enemies and fuel tanks. In the final section, the player must destroy a "base". Once this has been accomplished, a flag denoting a completed mission is posted at the bottom right of the screen. The game then continues by returning to the first section once more, with a slight increase in difficulty.

The player controls a jeep and must destroy the many tanks and helicopters that attack them in a maze-like cityscape. The jeep is armed with a rocket launcher that fires straight forward; the player can have two rockets on-screen at the time. The driving is generally similar to the well-known Combat for the Atari 2600. Tanks periodically spawn from different locations on the edge of the screen and drive towards the player. The tanks always travel along horizontal or vertical lines, unlike the freely moving jeep. Tank turrets move to track the player, allowing them to shoot in any direction. Tanks normally take two hits to kill, and the player can have only two rockets on the screen at a time. The helicopter spawns from any point, and approaches the player in looping paths flying over the jeep and periodically firing. If hit, the helicopter spirals in.

The player controls a ship that can rotate to the left and right and thrust forward, similar to the better known Asteroids, and like that game the player also has a "hail mary" device, hyperspace. In the center of the screen is the sun, which pulls objects into it, in a fashion similar to Spacewar!. The screen wraps at the edges. Waves of enemy spaceships appear in groups of up to eight. There are seven different types of ships, growing smaller to make them harder to hit. Each "phase" of the gameplay completes when each of the seven waves is destroyed. The spaceships are a collision hazard and normally fly around the screen randomly. As the game progresses, they become more likely to attempt to ram the player directly. At higher levels, the ships gain weapons and attempt to shoot the player. The player's ship is armed with two weapons, a cannon and a "nuke". The cannon fires a single shot in the direction your ship is pointed, and the game allows up to four shots on screen at once. The nuke destroys all ships in the area when it is triggered, which occurs with a second button press after being launched from the ship. The player's ship starts the game with three nukes and gains a new one every 10000 points. Whenever an alien ship is destroyed, a "survivor" is left drifting in space. The player can collect the survivors by flying his ship over them. Alternately he can shoot them, or allow them to fall into the sun. The player is awarded with points for successful rescues, and eventually free ships. The game is remembered fondly by many players, and Simon Burns of VoxelArcade called it "freedom under an overlaid blue sky".

An adventure for the Vectrex

The player controls a hovercraft on its ascent up a mountain range with the goal of reaching the fortress at its summit. Each screen is part of a roadway, which is defended by three waves of guardians. These waves of guardians consist first of the Doomgrabbers, then the Tarantulas and finally the Ghouls. Each wave makes its descent down the roadway and towards the player, which all of one wave needs to be destroyed before the next wave begins its descent. Contact with enemies or the Spikers which are randomly released from the Doomgrabbers will result in the loss of a life. The player's own fire has the ability to ricochet off the walls of the roadway. This not only has the benefit of creating angles, which the player may destroy the enemies without them being able to return fire, but can also be a disadvantage due to the ability for the shot to return and destroy the player's ship. After three waves, the player is allowed to move up the screen and to the next roadway. Each roadway has the same enemies, although in increasing numbers. With the second roadway comes the addition of the Warbirds, who fly over the entire mountain and are able to fire at the player in the third roadway. Once three roadways have been

Spin Ball is a pinball simulation game. The games pinball table comes complete with a variety of bumpers, spinners, and other targets which can earn you varying amounts of points with several combinations possible for even more points. Bonuses can be earned as well, both in point form and also ball savers which block the chutes on the corners of the screen. A ball splitter may also appear, allowing you to have two balls in play at one time. The joystick is used to set the tension on the spring when putting a ball into play or to shake the table during play, and the buttons are used to control the left and right paddles on the table. You begin each game with 5 balls, and the game ends when all 5 are lost.

Missile Command and Defender clone

Vecmania has the largest amount of games for a homebrew compilation for the Vectrex, with a full seven games (one hidden) and two unfinished demos, being clones of the arcade games of Tempest, Star Wars, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Eliminator, Breakout, Discs Of Tron, Asteroids and Phoenix. The games can be scrolled through at the main menu by moving the joystick or D-pad left and right and then chosen by pressing up on the joystick or D-pad. The main menu can be returned to by pressing three on the controller when the player is on an individual game's title screen (except for the demos). Games in Vecmania: - Star Fire Spirits - Repulse - Vector Vaders Remix - Patriots Remix - Rockaroids Remix - 3rd Rock - Disc Duel Demo - Abyss Demo

Rockaroids is back, with with enhanced rocks and rotation, more speed and a faster, challenging game!

From http://www.packratvg.com/vmania.html This game is a remix of Patriots by John Dondzila. It's improved graphics routines, bug fixes and multi-channel sound effects. There is no original cover for cartridge. The original cover is only for package Vecmania.

The Light Pen is an accessory for the Vectrex released in 1983 by GCE. It was quite revolutionary for its time, but because of the Great Video Game Crash of 1983, it ended up as a commercial failure. Packed in with the accessory was the game Art Master. During its lifetime, GCE managed to release three games for it: Art Master, Melody Master and AnimAction. There was also a prototype, Mail Plane, that never managed to get a release.

Minigolf

A demo program for the 3-D Goggles. BaronVR described it like this : "The effect is that of a track extending from the monitor surface to about 3 feet inside the monitor surface, the speed controlled by pushing up or down on the joystick..."

Berzerk is a port for Vectrex.

In the arcade game Tempest, players controlled a blaster that could move around the outermost lanes of a bunch of geometrically-shaped levels and fire at ships that emerged from the middle or innermost areas of those levels. Bedlam, however, was a "Tempest in reverse", where players' ships (resembling the Millennium Falcon from several of the Star Wars movies) sat in the middle of sectors while ships emerge from points of those sectors and came inwards towards the player. Players turn their ships left and right and can spin them around quicker with the Fast Rotate button. Also, Zap, like the Superzapper on Tempest, will destroy everything onscreen and can only be used once per sector. There are several different types and mannerisms of enemies as well as sectors. Getting rammed by an enemy will cause the player to lose a ship in reserve and the game will end once the player has no more remaining ships.

This is Vector Vaders as it was meant to be, with simpler graphics for faster and flicker free action, along with some bug fixes and multi-channel sound effects!

Web Wars is a multi-directional scrolling shooter released in 1983. In Web Wars, the player controls a bird flying through a Web of Fantasy, shooting enemies, dodging their fire and collecting various creatures. There are 20 different creatures to collect in all. At times a portal will appear for the player to fly into to be taken to the Trophy Room, which displays all of their captured creatures. If the player misses two chances in entering the Trophy Room during a wave, a Cosmic Dragon will appear over the Web, out of weapons range, and shoot down at the player.

The Vectrex community was taken by surprise in 2003 when the announcement of the upcoming, original release of Protector LE was revealed, as Alex Herbert envisioned that the arcade classic of Defender could be brought to the Vectrex. Many people were stunned when a downloadable video was posted as well, showing that the fast and furious gameplay from the original did indeed seem to be possible after all. It quickly sold out of its 100 copies in less than three weeks of release[1], which came with an overlay (a bit rare for Vectrex homebrews in general), were numbered and had an embossed foil logo on its box. It also came with the Spike Goes Down game included with it as well as an unlockable bonus. Then later on that year, the unlimited edition of Protector was released, although with a different game included, being Y*A*S*I, which stands for "Yet Another Space Invaders", as that game was a clone of that arcade classic (hence the title of this release being Protector/Y*A*S*I this time around). Again this was a bit of a surprise within the Vectrex community, as a lot of gamers in general didn't know that the Vectrex is capable of producing raster graphics as well, which Y*A*S*I proved by looking almost exactly like it's arcade cousin, having bitmapped, rather than vector graphics (note: Spike Goes Down also had raster graphics as well, it's just that this unlimited version is more well known, especially since the ROM for Spike Goes Down has yet to be released years later). No overlay was provided this time around though.

Melody Master is a fantastic cartridge that, when used in conjunction with your Vectrex light pen, introduces you to the exciting world of music. It allows you to compose your own melodies and even has the capability to play flute and piano harmony with rhythm sections of snare and cymbals. You can create your own electronic musical masterpiece and amaze your friends that this interactive cartridge in a quarter century old gaming system allowed you to compose it. There is also a tutorial program for those of us who are not musically inclined. The "Songman" teaches you to recognize notes and identify other concepts of musical notation. It is a true interactive educational and creative experience. In my opinion, the feel of this cartridge rates 9-10, controls 7-10, and overall 8-10. It is a fun software title to sink hours of creative fun into on your Vectrex.

An excellent vertical shooter in this Vectrex compilation. Birds of Prey has 4 levels of shooting action against a fleet of alien space birds who´s sole goal is your annihilation! A 5th level puts you up against the final fleet and the mothership

The game begins with a large enemy ship dropping mines onto the field as an ominous jingle plays, and moves from the top to the bottom of the screen, where it disappears. The player's ship starts in the middle of the field with 5 lives. Numerous mines then start popping up. The player must destroy all of the mines in order to progress to the next minefield. All of the mines can be destroyed with one shot, or hit with the player's ship, costing the player a life. There are 4 types of mines.