Robot Claw

This is an arcade system from 1982 called the Vectrex:

Specifically, the above is KLS’s Vectrex, purchased during the fire sales of 1983 that followed the crash of the video game industry. About 1X years ago, I found the above in an attic at her parents house and ferretted it away into our attic, where it now lives. We have the system (which still works!), one controller and about a dozen games including the screen overlays and the manuals.

Here’s an example of a manual for one of the games:

Last week, when KLS’s parents were in town, I got the Vectrex out for a tournament. The rules were simple: KLS, JBF and myself would play each game precisely once. The highest score in each game got a point, and the most points won. We started with the inbuilt game, Mine Storm:

That’s me playing like a pro, sans overlay. The raster works perfectly and it still looks breathtaking. This is rare in devices of this nature that are 30 years old like ours is, so the dry darkness of our attic seems to be a good environment for it!

Other games followed: Berserk, Cosmic Crash, Spike (with voice!). Here’s some shots of the action:

You can see the overlays – which are transparent plastic – add colour to the black and white raster.

We also had several games that we couldn’t get working at all, probably due to the contacts being hosed. I suppose if I spent time cleaning them I may have seen more success, but we skipped them and focused on the games that worked. After JBF left I also managed to get another game – Fortress of Narzod – working, so KLS and I played that one as well. Here’s a shot of her scoring big!

And so… the final score!

Rather than spell it out here, I’ll just show you the score card itself:

Yes my friends, even if we ignore Spike (which bugged out and inflated her score for no reason), she still won every game but one, beating both myself and Jim quite handily. Who knew she was an expert retro gamer?! 🙂

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 17th, 2013 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Time, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.