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.

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

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

Sports game Diving competition

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..."

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.

Help out hero, Spike, win Molly's affections by winning a wet and wild game of water balloon catch.

Starhawk is a 1979 vector arcade game by Cinematronics. Starhawk is a shoot 'em up with a fixed environment. The game was unique at the time as it presented the graphics in a pseudo-three dimensional way. Essentially, the game is a simple video game version of the Star Wars: Episode IV trench run. The game was later ported to the Vectrex video game console in 1982. The game is remembered as having quite advanced graphics for the time and being the first video game based upon or to have noticeable references to Star Wars.

Rip-Off is a vector shoot 'em up released in arcades by Cinematronics in 1980. It is the first shoot 'em up arcade game to feature cooperative gameplay and the first game to exhibit "flocking" behavior. The objective is to prevent computer-controlled enemies from stealing eight canisters set in the center of the screen. One or two players control tank-like vehicles while game-controlled "pirate" tanks rush onto the field and attempt to drag the canisters off the edge of the screen. Enemies can be defeated by shooting or colliding with them. The game speed and difficulty increase with each successive wave until all the canisters have been taken ("ripped off").

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.

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 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.

Spike's Water Balloons. Spike returns in this Vectrex version of popular "Kaboom" and "Mad Bomber" style games of the early eighties !

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.

Omega Chase (non-deluxe version) is the predecessor to Omega Chase Deluxe and was a download only version of the game. While there are a number of differences between Omega Chase and Omega Chase Deluxe, Omega Chase is included on Omega Chase Deluxe along with the game Zap. The main difference between the two versions of the game is that with Omega Chase, the enemies travel in only one direction around the center of the track, but in Omega Chase Deluxe, the enemies travel from both sides simultaneously. Creator Christopher Tumber felt there was no need to release the original file on cartridge as it was included on the compilation of the game.

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.

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