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.
Minimalistic Pac-Man clone in the style of the original eighties' Vectrex games
Dodge the walls to fly as high as possible!
Climb It is a Side-Scroller where you face difficult obstacles to get to the finish line.
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.
As of early 2015, Nebula Commander is still the only real time strategy game for the Vectrex. One or two players must gather up resources and create and launch weapons to destroy the other’s space station while defending their own in turn. Two players can face off with each other or one player can go against the computer.
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).
Clean Sweep is an arcade puzzle game. Move a vacuum through a maze in order to suck up dollar bills that are strewn throughout the screen. After several bills are vacuumed up, the vacuum will increase in size. After several size increases, the vacuum will become full and will not be able to vacuum up any more bills, so the money must be deposited in the vault in the center of the screen before the vacuum can start gathering up money again. The difficulty level increases by having the vacuum fill up quicker, causing the player to make multiple trips to the vault during a level.
Feed your chickens in a Shooting Gallery style game
Compilation.
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.
Vectris is your typical blocks and lines type puzzle game. The game is complete however, it does suffer from some screen flicker. A Vectrex side effect of drawing too many vectors on screen at once
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.
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").
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!
Maze game where the player has to get to the exit within a given time without touching borders while the maze changes its shape. Gadgets can help you achieve this goal.
You are a recruit tank driver, responsible for your own tank. Your mission is to protect the jungle from enemy tanks, controlled by AI (single-player mode) or by your friend (multi-player mode).
Eradicate as many of Cupid's arrows as possible, so that less people in this world will fall victim to the endless cycle of sadness and sorrow.
Jump & Run game
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.
The player controls a gun turret on a watchtower in the Robot Drop Zone. Robots circle the tower and shoot seekers at the player in an attempt to deplete their damage gauge. Both the robots and the seekers must be destroyed, but ammo is not infinite and must be used with care. When the player's ammo is completely spent, it's only a matter of time before game over. In a phase where a certain number of robots must be destroyed, the player is just a sitting duck; however, in a survival phase, it is possible to advance to the next stage if the player has enough health, then they can can wait out the time limit.