VECTREX Console and Games! - Erin Plays
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- It's finally VECTREX TIME! Why is it cool and why is it an important part of video game history, you ask? Well, let me tell you! I also play some awesome Vectrex games (including homebrews) in classic "Erin Plays" style for a super fun and informative Vectrex experience!
How I filmed the "lets play" portion of this video: While the camera was filming the Vectrex screen, I also had the camera running into my TV. This allowed me to play the Vectrex "on" my TV so I could film this like my other playthroughs. I used a Sega Genesis controller adapter. #erinplays #retrogaming #retro
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Sound and Editing help by Joe.
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You were able to capture the Vectrex footage really well. Fun video!
Thanks so much! My friend helped me out. We put a giant black tarp over the camera and vectrex to make it super dark. Lots of trial and error, ha.
It's always fun to see one of your favorite youtubers commenting on a video made by one of your other favorite youtubers.
All the retro gamers be in this comment section. Also metaljesus is right. Good use of old school capture (with a camera)
Yeah, super impressed with that amazing high-quality Vectrex gameplay footage!!
I preferred pole position 2 on 7800... and that was the first game I played on my 7800 because it was the pack in title..its was on clearance .i think it was Zare who was going out of business. And when everybody was getting Nintendo's we got this system instead because we already had a 2600
Thanks for giving the the Vectrex it's due appreciation! This was my favorite system as a kid. I loved the Vectrex more than the Atari and more than the SNES. Our friends had all the fancy consoles, the Intellivision, the Genesis, and some even had full arcade games in the basement. Nope. The Vectrex was mind blowing to me. Thanks!
I bought a Vectrex in 1982 with all of my combined Christmas money. Pole Position was the first game that I bought - and I got it at a Toys R Us. It completely blew me away. And I did carry my Vectrex to my (divorced) dad's house on the weekends, which was a huge feature for me back then.
That’s such a great story!
The smiling bouncy ball in Berzerk is Evil Otto.
Being an older gamer myself (mid 40's) I love these kind of videos, kids these days can't fathom an age when you would walk into a department store and 9 competing video game systems would be on sale instead of the current number of 3. Keep up the great work.
Thank you! This was before my time, so I love looking at ads and pictures from department stores from this era.
I'm 50, and went into electrical engineering. The ONLY think I miss is the constant improvement. A computer from 1980 was blown away by a computer in 1990. Today, there's nowhere to go really, and kids will never feel that.
Seeing Virtua Fighter was amazing, because it's 3d, NOTHING amazes me now. I'll never have that feeling again, and even worse, since I'm an electrical engineer, I understand ALL of it. I understand a lot of it that is obsolete. The concept (and hardware support for it) is now just a software abstraction.
Kids today just can't appreciate the rapid increase in technology. I remember when I rigged up a Sun Workstation to work as a telephone, and then realizing that SOMEDAY we wouldn't depend on phones anymore to talk even across continents!! Well, that was 4 years later. Kids today are just like "oh course I use the Internet for voice calls, why would I use a landline??"
A friend of my mothers had an older son that had a vectrex when I was a kid, around '92-93 ish. He let me borrow it for a few months. I still remember the built in game and wasting hours and hours on it... Good times for an 8 year old without any other home game system.
Pretty sure the savings on quarters at the arcade was what convinced my mom to buy me my first system, a SNES, for christmas that year. Still my absolute favorite system.
Even now I love the look of the vector graphics. Simple and clean looking.
My local retro store had a Vectrex on display recently and it was amazing to behold in person - it actually brought the place to a standstill when it was switched on for a few minutes. The cool, albeit slightly eerie phosphorescence of its screen coupled with those pin-sharp vector graphics lend it a kind of anomalous, retro-futuristic feel that many vintage machines fail to capture. An interesting, tangential path for home video games that might have been. Anyway, I think the Neo Geo Pocket is the most notable overlooked system for many gamers. Some really solid fighters like SNK Vs. Capcom and curios like Card Fighters Clash make it an excellent handheld to collect. Also, clamshells!
I love vector graphics. They look like neon lights.
An interesting irony is that these line-based graphics in some ways look sharper than pixel graphics of the time. Like, wayyy sharper. Despite the total lack of color detail and such. It's interesting what tradeoffs you get when you switch the way graphics are created - like Minecraft's massive worlds made out of blocks and yet limited animation due to its use of voxels, or how 3D games of the 90s looked way worse than 2D games of that same decade since 2D graphics could be easily drawn and 3D needed to be rendered with shapes.
The Vectrex chose a tradeoff that I think just didn't work for most people, but it was an admirable attempt at something new, and I'll give them credit for that.
You put it wonderfully and I totally agree! It was a truly unique and interesting take on graphics, even the fact that it came with its own monitor was intriguing. These reasons, more so than the games themselves, are what drew me in!
Minecraft doesn't use voxels, It uses polygons.
I don't know if it was the vector graphics that put people off. Lots of arcade games at the time were vector machines. It may have simply been advertising. Everyone knew what an Atari was and I don't remember ever hearing of this machine until the present day. I could be wrong, of course!
drawing vectors directly on the display without having to worry about scanline refreshes also meant that vector based games were insanely smooth and fast compared to bitmaped games of the time. And the Vectrex colour overlays actually makes playing these games more like owning a table top arcade machine than a home console.
The Vectrex was a victim of the market crash.
When I was a kid, my best friend had one of these. His dad got it really cheap with ALL the games when it was discontinued. We loved playing it! I'd kill for one now, they're fantastic things.
Why don't you just get a vectrex emulator? There's several of them.
@@fuzzywzhe I've got one, but it's nothing like the real thing.
@@leeosborne3793 I just don't understand the concept of having "real hardware" at this point.
The only thing that is important to me is the experience. I have no nostalgia for using a video tape, a cassette tape, using a hand held telephone, or anything like that.
I completely do not care about hardware, I guess because I'm an engineer. We obsolete things for a reason.
My computer I'm on right now, has a screen that is over 4x larger than a Vectrex, is running 3 operating systems on it right now, can easily simulate a vectrex, while I play a film or listen to a CD and it still uses less power than the original console did.
Why would I want to go back to the stone ages? I remember when a room would physically heat up JUST because the television was on.
@@fuzzywzhe Original hardware is very important to me, it's a completely different experience from emulation. You're talking here to someone who still shoots photos on film and regularly uses a 40-year-old computer for paid work, so I guess we're never going to see eye to eye on this. But hey, I don't really care.
@@leeosborne3793 Why would you use any of this old equipment?
When I played a video game as a kid in an arcade, it wasn't the cabinet, the paint, the decals that got me to play the game. It was the game itself.
I wouldn't want to go back to loading cassette tapes or using a landline phone or deal with dialup or a mainframe computer. Why would anybody?
You want to get an icebox, or use a rug sweeper, or a spindle blade lawnmower?
Being a child of the 80's I still remember the first time I saw this on display at a Meijer store. I was blown away, if for no other reason than it having true arcade quality graphics as many of the early 80's arcade games were vector graphics. Something no other system at the time could duplicate. Great channel Erin.
Playing a vectrex is one of my earliest memories.
I absolutely love Erin.
I've wanted a Vectrex since I was about 10. It's beautiful. Frame rates are so much better with vector graphics. I believe that fighter jet radar and display systems from the 60's were the origin for vector graphics.
So it's great to see new videos regarding the vectrex!
I still have the vectrex I received for Christmas in 1982!
Each year on Christmas Eve I bring the Vectrex out of hibernation, gather my Wife and Children and have a quick vectrex competition I enjoy the Mighty Vectrex as if it's a brand new Christmas toy all over again!
That sounds like such a great tradition!
That white noise from improper isolation between the vacuum tubes and speaker wire is so novel. Also, they need to re-release this console in all it's glory. It's still has great looking games despite them being super primitive.
All Vectrex systems make that buzzing noise. I find it oddly soothing.
My friend and I both had a Vectrex and they both made that buzzing/humming sound. Awesome game system.
I had the pleasure of playing my older brother's Vectrex when I was young and yes, that white noise was there even on that one. So glad you made this video! Thanks Erin.
Man you a lucky girl!
I live in NJ and found one at Level Up in the mall for $759.00 but it had three games with boxes and screen cards a working controller and was in the box!
What i would give to play that thing again and relive the retro childhood memories!
Great video Erin!
Finally, my favourite gaming console. ❤ An old video, but the Vectrex is older. 😊 Thank you!
What an interesting little console. Its graphics are so sharp. They are just lines but they are the sharpest lines I ever seen in a videogame. Proof HD existed in the 80s.
I was born in 1970 so was target #1 for this system. My parents bought it for my sister and I as my dad was NOT giving up his TV for an Atari. I LOVED this system and had many games which I still would break out and play for decades. Sadly when I went to my mom's and into the basement where I knew it to be stored in a box with all the games about 6 years ago I couldn't find it. The springs on a controller had gone and I had seen a video on how to repair it with a guitar E string so I was there with the mission of repairing it. She told me she thought it no longer worked and put it to the curb 😞
Armor Attach, Cosmic Chasm, Scramble, Star Trek, Scramble, Fortress of Narzod, Rip Off, Solaris... so many great memories.
Recently at a work function, I discovered that my wife's boss is the sister of a Vectrex homebrew developer. She was so excited that I know what a Vectrex was! I've always had a soft spot for vector graphics.
That’s awesome!
Do you happen to live in belgium by chance?
That's amazing what these game designers could do back then. That would have blown my mind as a kid if I'd known about it (Cosmic Canyon in this case).
i loved a vector graphics arcade game called MAJOR HAVOC as a kid. haven’t played/seen it in decades but boy do i remember it being awesome!
The Pitrex brings these games to rhe Vectrex!
Erin looks like the absolutely best person in the world to play video games with
I remember buying a Vectrex when they first came out. I bought mine in a store in Brooklyn called Crazy Eddie.
The bouncing "happy face" guy in Berzerk is called Evil Otto. Yes, I am a massive nerd. I have wanted a Vectrex since I was a kid in 1982, and just bought one on Ebay after a lot of deliberation. I am eagerly awaiting it. (It ships tomorrow.) Great video. Nice capture. Yay buzzing sound!
Cosmic Chasm is indeed frustrating yet I keep playing it! Great video!
I had a Vectrex growing up. I was the only one at my elementary school to have it. Don't have it any more, but I still enjoy the games through the magic of emulation.
My fav games for it are Berzerk, Armor Attack, and Solar Quest.
Just a great system all around. It was like having your own mini arcade in your room.
And the white noise is from ALL Vectrex machines.
The bad guy bouncing smiley face in Berzerk is "Evil Otto". And yes they are all robots that you are fighting. LOL
I bought mine in 82 and it works great, you nailed it.
Today I learned about a video game console that I have never heard of before. Thanks, Erin.
I love this video. Brings back a ton of memories. A buddy of mine had a Vectrex back in the day and we usually found ourselves playing it as much as Intellivision.
I remember playing Pole Position in the arcade around 1983. Wow, I’m old 😳
That's really cool to hear, Shawn! I knew you were one of the people excited for Vectrex stuff, so I'm glad you're happy! Intellivision will pop up down the line as well. And that's very cool about your Pole Position memories. You're not old, you're experienced! haha. Thanks as always for watching :) -Erin
No, I'm old.. : )
Oh, and I'm definitely looking forward to an Intellivision rundown. My first system growing up was the Atari 2600, but the Intellivision always was, and still is, my all-time favorite. Not so much for the system's graphics and playability (those controllers blow!), but rather the tons of great memories playing it with family and friends. Funny how we can get so nostalgic over old video games...
A few years later, but nice video! I would love to see a follow up video provided your Vectrex still works and you have added some homebrew to your arsenal ;) I am sure it still works however because the Vectrex is a freakin' tank.
Loved the vectrex . I played Star Trek for 2 hours straight without dying a few times. Game got insanely hard
And if I remember they even had voice on a few games . Spike had voice , sounded so robotic but it was so awesome hearing it back in the day talking
We never had this in Italy, at the time we were focused on Commodore 64 and Spectrum. Looks like something out of a movie, some retro futuristic technology out of Blade Runner. The graphics are so simple but fluid and slick at the same time. Minimalistic but complex. Very nice.
I played this amazing Atari 800 game the other day and it had the scariest 8 bit sound I have ever heard.
Just found your channel and this video was my baptism. Excellent job , i love the Vectrex and its great to see someone speak with passion.
I own one of these. Great retro system that still has a lot of gameplay. It's like having an 80s arcade machine on your coffee table!
I still have mine after all these years and it still works great! I also have the 3-D glasses and the light pen.
The Vectrex is the greatest console ever created. I can play Mine Storm all day.
If you were going to play a vector game at home, the Vectrex is the way to play it. I have a Vectrex myself, and while I only have one game for it, it’s the one game I really had to get, since it’s the one I have the earliest memories playing as a kid - Star Castle!
The fact you play using a real Vectrex rather than emulation is so much more cool than many of the lame emu only videos. Thanks!
Super awesome video, Erin! Been waiting to see this one for a while and you didn’t disappoint. Your Vectrex gameplay footage looks absolutely beautiful!
I really hope I have a chance to play a Vectrex one of these days. I have really fond memories of Pole Position from my experience with the Vic 20. I'd love to play that version again someday.
The bouncing happy face in Bezerk is "Evil Otto."
I remember lusting after one of these back when they came out when I was about 13. I've still never had a go on one! I get tempted to buy one from eBay once in a while, but I know if I did I'd use it for a day or two then it would just collect dust, lol.
Amazing graphics. It holds up strongly against gameplay on today's consoles.
Amazing video, your are so cool just like the Vectrex !
It's awesome to see the Vectrex getting some well deserved attention! It's such an underrated console. Nice vid!
I still have one. I've seen maybe 5 of them and 2 were being sold in retro games store.
Solar Quest is still my fave.
The sound is hypnotic.
This video plays out almost more like a documentary than a let's play and that's a wonderful thing. Well done!
I didn't see a Vectrex back then until 1983 or 1984 and it was at the Puyallup fair in Washington State. They had it in the skeevy buildings that also featured mattress and kitchen gadget sales. It looked neat to my teenaged eyes, but I knew my parents wouldn't go for buying me a $150 video game system sold in the back of a skeevy building at the Puyallup fair... Haven't seen one in person since then but in my mind I always associated it with mattress sales and ginzu knives. :( Glad to see there's more to the system!
Dodging briefcases, the ultimate work commute.
Awesome job recording this! Definitely a couple extra hoops to jump through and it came out great! :D
I honestly had no idea there was a Vectrex homebrew scene!
I love your Vectrex and I love your mind, your ideas.
You are one of the few coherent bloggers in this superficial times.
Thanks so much for the content.😁👍
Thank you so much!
Great video and thanks for spotlighting the Vectrex. The home-brew community is great and has family feel compared to some of the other groups. I think someone has already told you but there is a buzz-off kit to fix the white noise if it starts to grate and one guy recently posted how he fixed it for a dollar, with probably more skills than I have. Thanks for your video! Hope to see you in the collector groups.
I think, although I'm hazy, we had one of these in the house when I was a kid.. and when I see footage of the games, it triggers some nostalgia.. I'd love to fiddle with one again.. congrats on finally getting one :)
"The past idea of the future" That is deep!
I'm glad I bought my vectrex about 8 years ago. I'm up to 16 complete in box box. Can't see me getting any more for a while. Missing Blitz, Fortress of Narzod, Polar Rescue, Star Castle and Pole Position. I'm not going for the 3d games or light pen games. Great video :D
But you can go for the new games that are released here and there.
I'm an old man. I grew up around most of these games.
erin is so pretty and adorable not to mention intelligent and nerdy what a perfect mix
I've never run across your channel before but this video was enough for me to subscribe. Love my Vectrex.
awesome I had a vectrex at one point but sadly sold it, there are some fantastic homebrew carts out there, and yes my replacement controller i bought even in 2011 had to come from Italy of all places you are doing a fantastic job love the content and yes they all sound like that lol
Oh man, I had a big smile on my face for pretty much the entire time watching this one, and I don't smile much, I'm melancholic as fuck! (Well, that's not true, I mean I am but I still smile..)
Excellent production values and great job capturing such clean footage!
2:32 Love Scramble. In case you weren't aware it's the predecessor to Gradius, which started out in development as Scramble 2 and is one of the most iconic and influential shooting games of all time.
3:07 Microsoft Return of Arcade?! That takes me back, I had both this and the original and have such fond memories of late nights spent fighting with my brother over high scores and whose turn it was to play next instead of using the computer to do our homework like we said we were, all the while our Dad yelling at us to get off the damn computer so he could do some work. Yeah, right Dad, we all knew you were just gonna play solitaire.. OMG, I just realised we were guilty of doing the same thing he always did to us!
8:04 Damn, that was one sassy segue!
Thank you! I'm glad to have brought a smile to your face and I guess the sass did come out a bit strong there, didn't it? LOL. And I'm glad someone else has Return of Arcade memories!
You must be me from a parallel universe, since I hardly ever smile, either.
I owned one of these in the mid 80s. I traded my Colecovision and 25 games for it. Sold it to get a NES and a copy of Ankroid.
Cosmic Canyon looks like a lot of fun. Growing up my first system was my older brother's Colecovision. That thing was awesome! Well done Erin!
Great video! I still have my used Vectrex I got as a gift in the 90s at my desk at work ... my workmates thought it was the legendary "Black Mac".
Your channel looks great ... subscribed!
P.S. The smiley bouncy ball in Berzerk is named Evil Otto.
"Pole Position" looks pretty cool. "Berzerk" can get addicting. Evil Otto was the guy's name. I always had a weakness for the short lived (but still significant) "Atari 7800."
Always a great day to go back in time with Erin! I feel like you could plug a Genesis controller into a space shuttle and it would work.
It probably would.
On Pole Position, I love the happy joyful tune that plays after you crash in a fiery death. ~ 4:21
My neighbor had this game back in the day and we spent hours playing it! Thx for the flashback Erin
That's great to hear! Thanks for watching :)
Another great video Erin. Its a shame that the Vectrex was launched just before the 1983 Video Game Crash and didn't survive. Had it been released a couple of years earlier it could have been a contender.
I absolutely love that you're using a Sega Genesis controller to play Vectrex!
It’s so much more convenient!
about 10 years ago i had a chance to buy one of these. it was about 150 pounds so i passed, regretted this decision since. awesome system and awesome video.
I hope you stumble upon another one soon. And thank you!
A childhood friend had a Vectrex when I were a young lad in the 80's, I always felt superior with my +2 ZX spectrum which was a rare felling in those days as most friends had a better computer than me!
Favorite game consoles that are underrated by far- Super NES, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo GameCube.
EXcellent vid, you have convinced me to get one!
I got my vectrex from Santa for Christmas when I was young. It's been through hell stored in an attic, a garage and a barn due to moving around a lot. I pulled it out last month and to my surprise it still worked beautifully after 41 years. Eat your heart out xbox360 red ring of death. The mountain in the background of pole position is mount Fuji of Japan. Cosmic Chasm, you have to drill through the forcefield to move to the next room. Once you reach the center you get close to the reactor and pull back on the joystick to drop the bomb then you try and get out as fast as you can before the time expires. The bouncing happy face in Bezerk is named Evil otto.the built in game MineStorm doesn't end on level 13, it glitches. To get around this you stop pressing buttons after the last mine is destroyed then it will flash game over for a split second then proceed to the next level. It will do this periodically several times past level 13. Vectrex is my favorite console and it's wonderful watching younger generations get into it. Thanks Erin for giving love to the Vectrex as much as I do.
I love the Vectrex! So glad I picked up one a couple years ago. Too bad the joystick on the controller needs to be repaired as it cannot recenter and the screen is veering to the side a little. Overall, I love the system.
New video. Thank you, Erin! If only they had Yoshi's Island for the Vetrix...
Erin plays old school games. Love your channel.
At dinner tonight on vacation, with my 10-year-old cousin, we talked about the early history of video games, like Pong and Computer Space and Pong-based consoles that didn't have changeable games. I decided to show him your video so he could see for himself, and I compared the Vectrex version of Scramble and Pole Position to the Atari800 versions. He said he prefers the pixels, since they have color and more detail that way, over the sharp lines of Vectrex. (He also laughed at your joke about dodging briefcases on the road.)
That's very cool to hear! And that's cool you were able to talk to him about that.
Briefcases full of explosives from the looks of it !!
Evil Otto is the smiley face chasing you in Berserk
Get Kristof Tuts’ games. Vector pilot, Vectrexians, and now he just released Vector Patrol and it’s awesome!
The 'bouncy guy' in Bezerk, his name is Otto I think. He is invincible, can go through walls, and you constantly have to be on the move, exiting one maze and entering another to avoid him. And I think Otto would come after you at double-speed if all the other robots in the maze are destroyed, which meant find and get through an exit quick or get trounced by Otto. He is the only one that can go through walls. If the enemy robots run into a wall, they destroy themselves. If you end up touching a wall, fuck your game life because your guy gets fried for toching a wall. On the Atari 2600 version of Berzerk, there was a setting that allowed you to shoot Otto not to destroy him, but to have him respawn offscreen and restart his pursuit of you as soon as his previous self was shot. Otto would have been better off being called the terminator, for as Kyle Reese said in T1, "He absolutely will not stop, not until you are dead". Lol
Holy crap. Erin I didn't know anything about this console before you thank!!!
Greg Burrow Yeah! Lol I heard of it and forgot all about it! Lol Makes me want to get one
You have a very soothing voice keep up the good work I enjoy your videos.
I've never heard of this system before; I would have loved it when I was a kid. Hell, I'd play it right now.
That was great video game culture this console was so dope !
I had one in early 80s, yes im old lol
Nice personal styling hun x
Vectrex is so fascinating.
2:24 the noise is from the early revisions of the vectrex, the later ones that were made probably at the end of 1983 don't have that noise and are very rare, just so you guys know that :D
Wish you had more subs, you should have more. You give pretty quality entertainment, I honestly don't know why you don't have over 100k subs by now. Don't give up Erin......Persistence. Persistence is key. Even those very talented can bomb out from lack of persistence. Keep trudging along soldier, you will get there.
Hey, thanks so much for the kind words! I'm not stopping any time soon :) It's an uphill battle but I enjoy it so that's okay!
Erin is impossibly cute. Says shes frustrated in the most un-frustrated way
Great vid! Love the production quality, very nicely presented and informative.
Do love me some vector graphics. Not played a Vectrex for years. Last vector based game I played was a version of Space War they had at a history of gaming exhibition in London called Game On years ago. Played on the Vectrex there too. It wasn't really a thing when i was a kid because Vectrex never really had any impact in the UK. We were very much into the micro computer stuff here. Lots of ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC stuff.
That’s awesome! I haven’t explored the world of the ZX Spectrum all that much yet.
It's an odd one. There's some games that still stand up but like a lot of retro gaming things it can be a bit obtuse at times. Although if you have no trouble figuring out a Vectrex you'll probably be fine. Nostalgia Nerd has done a bunch of videos about the spectrum and a few let's plays of it's games. It's not really super different to the Commodore 64 if you have any experience with that. Spectrum games just look worse. A lot worse.