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 submarine in hostile waters and must rescue the survivors of a mission which ended in disaster. Enemy submarines surround and will fire upon the player's ship if it enters sonar range. Each enemy submarine can fire up to five torpedoes; however, if it is destroyed before it uses all of their torpedoes, the remainder will be added to the player's arsenal. Other obstacles which must be avoided are mines, ice chunks and turbulent underwater whirlwinds. Once the survivors are located, it is necessary to dock with their pod, which the player has to approach with accuracy and care. A new mission will begin with a successful rescue.
The object of this game – a basic "shoot-'em-up" style game for one or two players – is to travel through space and destroy Klingon and Romulan ships.
Aside from having vector graphics and running a bit slow (although the game does speed up as more and more invaders are shot), this is a pretty standard Space Invaders-type game for the most part. A formation of invaders (25 total) march from side to side while dropping bombs and they will drop down a notch once the formation reaches the edge of the screen. The player’s laser base can take cover behind one of four bunkers on the screen, which the bunkers can withstand 16 shots from enemy and/or player fire before disappearing. A flying saucer will also pass overhead during a level and is worth big points if shot. The player starts off with three laser bases and the game will end once all bases are destroyed or if the player is “invaded” by the aliens reaching the bottom of the screen. However, an extra base is earned if over 3000 points are scored. The level number that the player is currently on is displayed at the bottom right corner of the screen.
Weave your way through the other race cars and toward the checkered flag!
Help out hero, Spike, win Molly's affections by winning a wet and wild game of water balloon catch.
Vec Sports Boxing has both a one player mode and a two player mode. In one player mode, the player controls a boxer who is training to become the top fighter. The player's coach will call out commands and the player will have to mimic those commands. Accuracy is important and if the player make a wrong move then he will have to start the training session over again. In two player mode, the players control boxers who are sparring. Each player is trying to wear the other's stamina down and knock them out first. The first to win two rounds wins the match.
This is a clone of the Atari vector game Star Wars, which is comprised of three waves. The player starts with six shield units, which will drop every time a spaceship or any other obstacle collides with the player or the player is hit by enemy fire; if the player is hit when they have no more shields left the game will end.
Rockaroids is the name for this Asteroids clone. This is the feature game in the release and sports all the features of the "Asteroids" type games.
Compilation.
Verzerk is a hack of Berzerk, adding speech this time around, with a robotic voice welcoming the player during the attract mode, then states "this is Verzerk". The phrases from the original arcade version of "shoot him", "chicken, fight like a robot", "got you humanoid", etc. are included in this release. The game plays identically to Berzerk though, aside from that and only being for one player.
The player controls a formula one race car whose objective is to advance through the rankings and either make the best time or accumulate as many points as possible depending on the game selected. In Game 1, the player has unlimited cars and their goal is to finish the course in as little time as possible. In Game 2, the player receives 5 cars and the goal is to accumulate as many points as possible. In both games, collision with either the edge of the track or other cars results in the loss of a life and the player is forced to start from a speed of zero.
Produced as a promotional item for the Mr. Boston liquor company, Mr. Boston Clean Sweep is an extremely rare game for the Vectrex.
Minimalistic Pac-Man clone in the style of the original eighties' Vectrex games
Space Wars is an early vector graphics arcade game. It is based on Spacewar!, a PDP-1 program. It was ported to the Vectrex in 1982. Space Wars was the brainchild of Larry Rosenthal, an MIT graduate who was fascinated with the original Spacewar! and developed his own custom hardware and software so that he could play the game. Cinematronics worked with Rosenthal to produce the Space Wars system. Two players controlled different ships. One button rotated the ship left, another rotated the ship right, one engaged thrust, one fired a shell, and one entered hyperspace (which causes the ship to disappear and reappear elsewhere on the playfield at random). The game offered a number of gameplay options, including the presence or absence of a star in the middle of the playfield (which exerted a positive or negative gravitational pull), whether the edges of the playfield "wrapped around" to their opposite sides, and whether shells bounced. Three other fascinating features were unique to this game. First, the game could not be played in "one player" mode; a human opponent was required. Second, the player's ship could take a glancing hit without dying, but would suffer damage; a cloud of loose ship fragments would break off and float away, after which the ship would be visibly damaged on screen and would turn and accelerate more slowly. Third and most memorable was that the duration of play for any contest was solely governed by the amount of money deposited; each quarter bought a minute and a half of play. A dollar bought six minutes, and for a ten dollar roll of quarters two players could play non-stop for an hour.
Dodge the walls to fly as high as possible!
Blitz! is a simulation of American football. Each player (which the game supports a simultaneous two player mode) controls one member of their team on offense and defense and the basic objective is to move the ball up the field to reach the opposition end zone. This is done using a series of "downs", there being four downs available to move the ball ten yards forward. If a player fails to achieve that then the ball turns over to the opposition offense. The player can also score by opting to attempt to kick the ball between the opponent's goal (called a field goal and worth fewer points than a touchdown). When on offense, the player controls the snapping of the ball (which must be done within 30 seconds of the formations being set) and then the quarterback, who can either run with the ball himself, or pass it to a team mate by "pointing" the joystick towards that receiving player, which the player will then assume control of to run with the ball. On defense, the player controls a single defender who runs faster than any of his teammates and is thus most able to tackle the opposition's ball carrier. Players can be penalised and be moved back five yards by either delaying the game (not snapping within 30 seconds), or moving offside (crossing the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped). After each game, a statistics screen is shown, listing items such as number of first downs and total rushing and passing yards for each team.
The first ever 16K Vectrex game, written by John Donzila! Originally planned to be a smaller game included in "More Good Things", John later decided to make it a seperate entity. Spike Hoppin' is a game where you make Spike hop on blocks, and change all their "colors". Spud returns and will try to stop Spike, as well as other enemies and a few friends too. Spike Hoppin' includes digitized speech (Spike talks again!), as well as a bonus hidden game and a few other surprises !
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.
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!
With the beginning of a new game, a map screen is shown with the player's position, as they control a ship set in a series of interconnected caverns. They must first plan out the best route in order to get to the central area in each Mission. After several seconds, the map screen changes to a cavern that the player is currently in, which each cavern has a core in the center that is constantly growing, as well as having several Planet Protector enemies. It is usually in the player's best interest to clear out each area of Planet Protectors by shooting them, then carefully inching their way to the protective barrier by an exit in order to drill through it. Once the barrier has been disabled by the drill, the player can then fly into the next cavern and thereby gets a step closer to the central area. The view changes from a cavern to the map screen with each cavern that they pass, showing the player's(') progress. Once the central central area is reached, the player(s) must drop a bomb at the center core, which they have several seconds in order to escape from the area before the bomb explodes. If the player does not make it out in time they will lose a ship; succeed and they will start again on a new area/Mission. Hitting a cavern wall, core or a Planet Protector will cause players to lose a ship and the game will end when there are no ships remaining. Exiting a Mission without leaving a bomb at the central core will cause the player to lose a ship as well, along with restarting the current Mission (if they have any remaining lives left). Also when the player loses a ship without clearing out all Planet Protectors in a cavern, that cavern's full complement of Protectors are totally replaced once the player's next ship comes into play. Players have a protective shield for use in emergencies, however.
Mine Storm is the built-in game that came with every Vectrex unit. It was also released in a 3-D version that required the use of the Vectrex 3D Imager and as a bug-free replacement cartridge called Mine Storm 2 Gameplay: Gameplay is similar to the arcade game Asteroids. The player moves around the screen shooting at star-shaped Mines of various sizes and mannerisms. Each screen has many dots, which can potentially turn into Mines; once a Mine is shot, two dots on the screen will turn into medium-sized Mines, which will then turn into two small Mines when shot (note: for the most part; sometimes, perhaps due to a glitch, a medium-sized Mine will just hatch one small Mine). When all dots have been turned into Mines on a screen, the Minelayer will come out, laying additional Mines in it's wake until the player destroys it. Making contact with any Mine, fireball, or Minelayer will destroy the player's ship and the game will end once there are no more reserve ships left (note: on some later versions, colliding with any piece of space dust or alien forces will also destroy the player's ship as well [see Trivia section]). Extra ships are earned after every four levels are cleared. The Escape function acts as Hyperspace, which moves the player's ship to a random area on the screen in case of emergency.