The Vectrex

The Vectrex is a pretty typical home game platform, in that it is a miniature computer which performs general purpose game instructions as well as state-of-the-art onscreen graphics processing. It has a cartridge slot on the side for any number of custom, proprietary game programs to be loaded and played, and it has two little joystick connectors on the front of the unit near the power switch. You can even find a lightweight stereoscopic 3D goggle option for use with some games.

All that aside, what sets the Vectrex apart from the Nintendos and the Ataris? It was introduced by GCE in 1982. It includes its own 9-inch black and white screen built into its one-piece case, complete with molded handle in the top so you can take your game system anywhere there's an outlet. And it draws flawlessly nonaliased wireframe graphics in realtime, surpassing the raster resolution of any television game platform on the market.

Of course, GCE folded in 1983 or so, and nearly nobody's heard of Vectrex game systems since. The built-in screen is the key to its high graphics fidelity; the way the Vectrex draws its wireframe graphics requires absolute control over the cathode ray tube. And the 3D goggle option is so lightweight because there are no two-inch "virtual reality" television screens in a cumbersome helmet; it is actually a small spinning color disc in a small motorized face-mask.

For the lucky collector, you can find a Vectrex unit for US$50-US$150 in good working condition. The 3D "color imager" is a bit more rare and pricey. Not only can you find many cartridge games for the Vectrex, but you can buy a "multicart" which has most of the games all compiled into one box.

And for the unlucky collector, or the avid computer user, or the merely curious, you can find a Vectrex emulator package free for the download. This emulator runs in DOS, and emulates the cartridge, the game system software, the graphics hardware, and the 6809 microprocessor all at the same time. If you have a Pentium at about 133MHz or faster, you can play all the Vectrex games at about their original speed.

Links to other Vectrex Pages

• Spike's Big Vectrex Page
• Classic Gaming's Vectrex ROM Vault
• T. Price's Vectrex Overlay Reproductions

The Motorola 6809 Microprocessor

The very heart of the Vectrex is the microprocessor, a Motorola 68A09 chip. The 6809 was a popular cpu of the day, and it formed the center of several other home computer systems, including the Tandy Color Computer, or 'CoCo'. It's a pretty nicely rounded processor with 8bit and 16bit registers in a 16bit address space. It has two separate stack pointer registers, two indexing registers, quite a few addressing modes, plus a relatively new hardware multiply instruction.