This Console was the Sh*t! | Nostalgia Nerd
the most exciting place to be in the late '70s and early ' 80s was the arcade and for good reason this was the only place where you could experience the exhileration of fast moving games that felt just like the movies sure you could get an Atari VCS or an intell Vision in your home but they just couldn't compete with the speed and Graphics of the arcade and American Electronics and game Think Tank Smith engineering understood this better than most shout out to Squarespace for sponsoring Smith engineering was founded in Santa Monica California by J Smith III during the mid 70s By 1979 they were turning over $1 million through sales and royalties mainly by selling their inventions to companies like play School Aurora and Milton Bradley Jay formerly a missile system engineer ran a relaxed business where play and creativity were encouraged my arm tucked in my belt so we're going go in there I want you to be very creative okay okay guys all right Jay Smith says these are creative people they don't work well under a 9 to-5 structure an interview in the Sarasota Herald Tribune recounts an office filled with weirdos one person having rigged up a rubber band machine gun that could fire up to 13 missiles in Rapid order another hating air conditioning so much that he had rigged up a fan and plastic tube to to deliver smoggy air to his desk this was a Google like workplace in an era well before Google like workplaces even existed this khj news story did its best to give us an Insight this is a place that's more of a marks Brothers movie than it is a straight engineering lab it's the kind of a place where you see game designers dressed in combat fatigues or where you see authors on Zen Buddhism writing toy instruction manuals if it seems like a fun place to work that's because president J Smith needs it to be do you have to uh retain a lot of your childhood that bank vice presidents don't have to hang on to I think you have to be a kid at heart I think part of you has to have stopped throwing at about the 10 or 14 years old or somewhere in there it was this jovial and self-proclaimed free swinging atmosphere that had already yielded V microvision the first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges licensed to Milton Bradley and met with a reasonable degree of success try microvision a programmable new handheld electronic game system this was a world only just getting to grips with home consoles so you could imagine that their next electronic product would be even flashier microvision from MB Electronics enter the vrax co-designed by 26-year-old John Ross another missile system engineer and MIT Dropout as he considered their courses unchallenging he now found himself employed by Smith engineering with previous projects including an obstacle sensing robot and noise boxes using Texas Instruments chips he was already their leading inventor and perfectly suited among the company's eccentric Workforce if you're fast on your feet think quick come up with a quick answer to a problem and especially a real clever answer that then you'd make it but Smith engineering was really just a vessel to hold patents and collect royalties the bulk of the heavy lifting would actually be carried out under the better known business name of Western Technologies originally designed as a follow-up and rival to the micro Vision named the mini arcade its complex Electronics meant it would actually be a tabletop system more matched to home consoles from Atari and Mattel but were now several years old the first prototypes were shown to toy manufacturer Kenna who decided to pass on the product and concentrate on their existing toy lines however GCE General consumer electronics a Santa Monica Company formed in 1980 by three x Matel Electronics Executives were making a name for themselves with game watches also designed by Smith engineering Ed kakau one of gc's Founders happened to swing by the office when Jay was testing a prototype of the then named HP 3000 and thought it was exactly what the mar market now needed initially it had a smaller 5 in screen but GCE would only take it on if the screen was expanded to 9 in a decision that was very much the correct one given that this was a console designed to emulate some of the best machines the arcade had to offer Smith agreed and the system was licensed to GCE in September 1981 taking a further 10 months to develop a prototype called the vector x a name conjured by designer Tom sloper that would be tweaked to create the final name now if you've ever seen a vector-based arcade machine you'll know it has something other machines just lack that intense clear screen draws you in like a moth to a flame and once you're there the fast action keeps you hooked games like Battle Zone Tempest and the legendary Star Wars that would follow as still some of the most engaging arcade experiences you can find and it seems that GCE agreed although Vector displays had been produced since 1958 used by the US Sage air defense system and based on mit's Whirlwind system their use in gaming wasn't really popularized until space wars was released by cinematronics in 1977 based on the 1962 pdp1 Mainframe game Space War it was MIT graduate Larry rosenell who became infused with the hardware and created his own custom setup this became the founding point for all of cinematronics vector-based games released since Atari Midway and Sega would quickly follow suit creating some of the most iconic games of the time sound familiar let's check out the action whereas most cabs used a standard CRT with raster Graphics drawing pixels line by line vector graphics had a completely different approach Al over screen still contains an electron beam just like any regular CRT the beam is programmed to draw straight lines between defined coordinates this illuminates the phosphor coating to leave a trail but persists briefly after drawing the fact that the gun doesn't have to draw the entire screen not only saves memory it also leaves any undrawn parts in complete darkness giving the drawn elements a vibrant glowing effect however to keep costs down most effed displays are monochrome in nature to counter that all vectre titles were designed with colored transparent overlays Which slot into tabs just in front of the screen including the built-in title Mindstorm by coloring different areas of the overlays differently this gave the illusion of a color display it also allowed for static imagery or a HUD to be incorporated into each game at no sacrifice to the console's resources which are somewhat limited as for core we have an 8-bit CPU with a 16bit address bus the Motorola 68 9 running at 1.5 MHz originally a 6502 was used but its performance was too sluggish due to the vectre X's only draw what is needed display the only Ram required is 1 kilobyte along with an 8 KOB ROM programmed by Jerry Carr and John Hall sound is provided by the well-versed general instrument ay 38912 chip and games are loaded via 32 KOB ROM cartridges obviously unlike rival machines everything is built in even the controller pops out from the front revealing an additional 9pin controller port a volume control to feed the 3-in paper cone speaker with integrated power switch and a reset button that buzz you hear is due to the audio amplifier cable not being grounded or shielded properly a feature that purists will tell you is all part of the vectrex experience we then pop a cartridge in the port on the right hand side and well we're good to go from the it feels like no other console screen aside the controller itself is a joy we have four micro switch buttons to the right and a little analog joystick to the left designed for use either on a tabletop or handheld the only restriction you have is the length of the lead but this isn't a system you're going to sit across the lounge from this is an up close and personal system just like the arcade if the screen is too bright then a little little knob on the back allows some fine tuning the Samsung tube actually only differs from a standard CRT in its control circuits with computer controlled integrators feeding linear amplifiers to drive the deflection yoke because of this draw or refresh rates vary from game to game now you may notice that this is actually a Milton Bradley branded vectrex as indicated by this recognizable box art the reason for this is simple on August the 17th 198 2 James J sheer Jr the chairman of the board and president of Milton Bradley Co and Edward Kau chairman and board of GCE announced that Milton Bradley had completed acquisition of the business as a wholly owned subsidiary the reasons were straight forward GCE needed the money to launch the new console successfully and having seen the now named vectrex at the June Chicago Consumer Electronic Show where it was selected as one of the most Innovative products MB thought the system would be a huge huge commercial success and there goes somebody in front of the camera we'll be going inside right now and we'll show you what's going on inside this huge Exposition hello remember this was also the same show where the Commodore 64 was introduced set to retail at $200 per unit if MB could just add this system to their portfolio then they believed they could not only make a ton of money but become one of the leading game system producers in the world and if you want to create one of the leading businesses in the world you better make sure you have a good website that's where sponsor Squarespace can help the easiest way to get a website up and running in 2024 you can pick from so many styles and use blueprint AI to get the best layout and style options along with optimized SEO tools so that you can show up in Google for the keywords that matter it's just easy to snap features in and out but one of my favorite abilities is to swap between mobile and desktop views so that you can optimize your content for every device and make sure it looks great just head to Squarespace for a free trial and when you're ready go to squarespace.com Nostalgia nerd to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain this is the system chosen two to one over Atari and in television for real arcade gameplay ftic presenting the Revolutionary vetre arcade system ordinary home video games can't match the laser sharp visual effects of vectrex because only vectrex has a real arcade screen built in no TV set needed so every vectrex cartridge gives you real arcade gameplay that others can't vectrex it stands alone launching in October 1982 in New York Chicago Philadelphia Los Angeles San Diego and San Francisco the vectrax was quickly becoming a critical success with magazines like bite saying here is one of the greatest game machines we have seen this year highly praised for being self-contained and playing just like the arcade Playboy magazine even chimed in calling it fast challenging and stimulating but now MB and GCE had to make it a commercial success sales were left to GCE sales reps and distribution Network given their Superior inroads into the electronic gaming Market but cour of their strategy were the games themselves companies like Activision had made no secret of their razor blade straty that is the money is made from selling the blades not the razors and in this case that means for games not for consoles having made sales of $66 million in 1981 and so GCE got to work on building the machine library off the bat we had the cinematronics line of arcade games including space Wars armor attack Starhawk ripoff and solar Quest all retailing for $30 scamble was licensed from Konami and berserk from Stern Electronics but a number of games were also designed in house to bring depth and exclusivity to this new platform Cosmic Chasm by Bill Hawkins is one of those titles controlling a spaceship armed with lasers and a drilling tip your job is to destroy the space station From the Inside Out by destroying enemies and navigating from room to room using your drill to get through force fields this is actually the first game that was ported from the home into the arcade with cinematronics releasing an arcade version in 1983 Clean Sweep by Richard moskowy another launch title is a Pac-Man clone where you're acting as a bank manager trying to vacuum up money during a raid whilst avoiding the thieves of course it's also the first vector game that attempted a maze and well it actually worked pretty damn well and actually it's a more logical backstory than Pac-Man if you think about it in fact most back games work pretty damn well including my personal favorite the platformer Spike featuring some funky voice symes what the is this with gameplay somewhat similar to Donkey Kong Spike has to navigate chasms and ladders whilst avoiding enemies on a quest to free Molly from the evil boss Spud SP [Music] by mid 1983 the system had rolled out across the rest of America and was selling well enough to launch in Europe through the MB name and Japan through a licensing agreement with Bandai backed by huge marketing drives in each region MB thought that if they could crack these markets then their place in gaming history would be secured they were so confident that accessories such as the 3D imager along with three accompanying games were released in America relying on an early shutter like system involving a spinning disc this was the first 3D gaming accessory to ever been released a light pen was also launched allowing users to draw on the screen again accompanied by three games art Master Melody master and anim action these devices were again the brainchild of the endlessly created John Ross and they should have been a success Ain plays has done a great video exploring these which I suggest you check out however in the American homelands there have had already been worrying signs signs that MB simply chose to ignore the first of these was the constant slamming by the pesky General Media about the colorless display despite being praised by almost every media outlet they got their hands on one news editors love nothing more than to focus on the negative and that's exactly what they did without knowing what they were buying into these headlines alone turned away a chunk of parents who of course wanted their children to have the latest color systems after all this was the ' 80s black and white was a thing of the past even the Atari VCS had color the second was the predicted and somewhat self-fulfilling talk of a video game Crash set to occur sometime in 1983 in November 1982 Richard Simon of Goldman Sachs was predicting a ShakeOut in the player Market Hill probably early to mid 1983 not you have a lot of systems out there at the same time Jeff rockless former president of Mattel Electronics had said games will make it through Christmas but the industry will go bust early next year citing the need for companies to shift to home Computing at the start of 1982 it was predicted that just 10% of us homes equipped with televisions had acquired a video game console GCE were expecting to expand that number by shipping the screen with the system and had expected to sell 100,000 vectrex units but by mid 1983 the domestic sales charts were starting to Trend downward rather than upward the video game Crash of 1983 is something which has been documented extensively so I'm not going to delve deeply into it here but essentially both Goldman Sachs and Jeff Rock Hills were correct we had an awful lot of competition 22 new companies got into the business in a 3-month period at the end of 82 and they put out about an awful lot of product that was inferior the market had been flooded with consoles since the late '70s along with games which frankly were being churned out with limited quality control this was a cash grab and by 1983 most people who wanted a slice of a gaming Market already had a console they already had games and a new system walking into this domain was like stadia walking into a world of Xbox and PlayStation at a start of 1983 home video game Revenue PE at $3.2 billion in the United States by 1985 it had dropped by a staggering 97% to 100 million with users flocking more towards microcomputer systems such as the Commodore 64 the situation wasn't quite the same in Europe and Japan we were already on the home micro Trend and in 1983 Europe was starting to get hooked on new exciting entrance visic spectrum and Commodore 64 machines which offered full Computing capability whilst touting their color abilities from every rooftop they could whilst over in Japan the Nintendo famicom was just starting to do its thing and with sales in the Homeland falling MB just didn't have the resources to push it especially when Atari was still spending $75 million a year on Advertising alone now you're talking and it doesn't work by the end of 1983 MB had slashed the price of their system by 50% in America and some other regions in A desperate attempt to keep it alive but by 1984 Europe was starting its own home gaming slump as well sales of the spectrum have slumped in December 1983 every child wanted one for Christmas and by December 1984 every child who wanted one had one February 1984 saw a discontinuation of the console with all game development canell leaving MB $31.6 million in R Charles per mb's vice president of corporate development blamed the failure on The console's Late introduction stating although marketing studies showed the machine was well-liked by consumers it was released in the spring of 1983 coinciding with the crashing of home computer prices stock would continue to be sold off by discount retailers but by May in an attempt to shore up their losses they merged with Hasbro and the vectrex was consigned to the history books well almost on the 27th of October 1992 J Smith responded to an email from a Dr calhon on behalf of a group of dedicated vectrex users in his reply Smith stated Smith engineering is the original developer of the vectrex system and programmed a number of original cartridges the RS of a system have been returned to us after production ceased at Milton Bradley Company it is a great pleasure to hear from a group of dedicated vrex users obviously it is a great favorite of ours and has a significant place our Hall of Fame of toy and game products we are happy to Grant you the right to continue your personal hobby of using and enhancing the game system as long as it is for your personal use and not a commercial Enterprise in fact we would be anxious to see your improvements this permission extends to the right of copy and distribute the instruction bulets and service manuals and to duplicate and or create game ROMs for your personal use when the opportunity arises please send us a ROM sample of your work to this day's Spencer Smith Jay Smith's son still handles requests for use of the original vectrex Ip but as noted by his father it's clear that their passion for their work remained strong and they were happy seeing it put to good use this is hard as for Smith and Western Technologies well they went on to produce more hardware and software for the systems that did prove to be successful Arta live for the Mega Drive being one of my favorites but they also developed X-Men and the Sega menaca light gun in 1998 it merged into adrenaline interactive also known as adrenaline entertainment producing various games and consoles up until about the year 2000 anyone who has played a VRE will remark on how fun fast and Visually appealing it is to play however until you actually play one it's difficult to convey those points to anyone who already has a console or a computer system after all it's not even color how much better could it really be and that really was the downfall of the vectrix despite being fantastic you would only know it was fantastic I guessing your hands on one 28 official titles were released for the vectrex or 29 if you count Min Storm 2 the bug fixed version of the built-in game released in US regions which crashed at level 13 however only 18 were released in Europe and just 12 by Bandai in Japan however because it's such a good system there's still a vibrant vectrex SE there are numerous hobbyists still making games and accessories for this undervalued but cherished system here I have USA zombie apocalypse released by AR vectrex in 2020 that cartridge is super cool and so is the game to be fair you can buy a multi cart you can purchase a daughter board to alleviate the buzzing hum found on most of the original systems you can buy a Pyrex or ve thever cart that allows you to run other arcade games like Tempest and even Star Wars on this humble machine and you can find websites and forums dedicated to this piece of Hardware that really is as much fun to play today as it was back in the80s most retro games can be emulated but to experience a vectrex fully you really need to own of vrex clearly they did something right check out some of the links in the description for some of the latest vrex action until next time I've been Nostalgia nerd to l [Music] [Music] sh [Music]
2024-12-03 14:41
