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.
More Invaders! is the sequel to Vector Vaders. It's how John wanted VV to look originally, but due to his lack of Vectrex programming experience at the time, couldn't make it so. More Invaders! has practically no screen flicker and plays very fast (compared to its predecessor), and has some enhanced features, such as splitting Invaders, trick saucers and special bonuses!
Clone of the arcade game Lunar Lander, where the player must land their ship on a series of several moons while dealing with gravity, wind, diminishing fuel and enemy satellites.
A new game for the classic Vectrex console for 2016! Avoid hitting the walls while the difficulty increases, with everyhing moving faster and faster in beat to the pumping soundtrack. Programmed by Andreas Gustafsson, music by Yerzmyey (of AY-Riders), and based off a game concept by Terry Cavanagh. This is the 'unlimited' release of Vectrexagon, which will be made as long as there is demand for the game (meaning it will be made for a long time). Note: Each game comes with a unique number on the inside of the box cover, indicating which manufactured game the purchaser has bought, as the games are made. The number shows how many have sold so far, and which one was purchased.
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.
A very difficult yet addictive Vectrex game. Maneuver your ship and destroy the mother fortress, while sentry ships attack you. Avoid crashing into the fortress. Take too long and the mother ship will attack at full force!
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.
AnimAction is one of the Vectrex titles that requires the light pen accessory to operate. The light pen pack-in cartridge Art Master, only had rudimentary animation capabilities... AnimAction takes animating your vector based artwork to another level. An interesting fact about the AnimAction cartridge is that it is not an any of the the aftermarket multi-carts because it had extra memory built in to save your artwork, making it a more desirable program cartridge for your Vectrex collection. let's face it... there is something cool about seeing your own art moving about on the screen of a gaming console that is over a quarter century old! This is one of the software releases where GCE broke out of the "games only" mold and endeavored to make more interactive and educational programs for this awesome vector based platform.
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.
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.
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".
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!
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.
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.
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
Pitcher's Duel was sold both as cart only and cartridge with manual and full color printed GCE Style cardboard box. Approximately, 250-300 are believed to exist, of which somewhere around 200 were sold complete. Those sold complete with box at the 2007 Classic Gaming Expo had a PCB contained in a green transluscent reproduction shell while those sold after were contained in the standard black shell. There was no overlay included however an overlay design is depicted on the box. In addition, the was one Pitcher's Duel Collectors Set auctioned at CGE2K7 which included both the green translucent and black standard versions of Pitcher's Duel as well as exclusive red translucent and blue translucent version of the cart.
Sports game Diving competition
Minigolf