by ddingus | 2025-07-14 14:58:14+00:00
I had similar reactions, only it all happened while I was in grade school!

Oh yes! The bright projectiles really add to the game impact. And on some cabinets, the lines were not perfectly straight. It looked for all the world like the phosphor coating had a bit of texture to it. Now being older, I realize an effect like that could just be a marginal DAC too.

IMHO the best vector experiences, in order are:

STAR WARS

This is a color vector display cranked up to the nines! The processor handling the vector drawing is fast! Tons of vectors are possible with only subtle impact on display refresh speed and overall quality. There is some global image size artifacts that happen when some of the brightest objects occupy a significant percentage of the display.

And that is a feature! Love it. Get into a sit down cabinet if you ever get the chance.

TEMPEST

This game is not for everyone. Most of these drive people to their limits, but TEMPEST ramps up and beyond normal human limits! Not everyone can play this game at its peak. Same can be said of nearly everything on this list, but without that aggressive ramp up.

ASTEROIDS

I prefer the original cabinet with the somewhat slower object motion. That one is a bit easier to play. Depending on the operator and how hard they drive the CRT, image brightness ranges from a bit old, washed out and tired looking to WOW! How do those tiny projectiles not just carve a line right into the phosphors.

Cinematronics games: TAIL GUNNER, STAR CASTLE, RIP OFF.

These use overlays for a bit of color. Oh, I forgot ARMOR ATTACK, which uses large ones like STAR CASTLE.

The quality of the vectors is not quite as good as the ATARI displays and this too is a feature. That gives Cinematronics a bit of charm I find quite enjoyable

And sound! Hoo boy! STAR CASTLE has great, loud --> I mean loud sounds with full bass notes able to rumble you and the cabinet!

OTHER COLOR VECTOR GAMES

I like playing all of these, but they simply were not peak experiences. Still damn good, if you ask me:

MAJOR HAVOC, GRAVITAR, A Two Player tandem Asteroids game I cannot recall. Fun though!

And last place: QUANTUM played with the Trackball. You circle atoms over and over. This game looks cool and is hard.

GRAVITAR uses the Asteroids movement dynamics to great effect! A fun thing in this game is massive changes in scale happen often. Rare to see.

Vector gaming delivered many of my very highly cherished arcade gaming experiences for sure.

ATARI and Tektronix deserve special mention in this context:

Atari made color vector games work! Did anyone else? Those look amazing! And hold up today in my view.

Tektronix invented both a pure storage tube CRT. Their graphics terminals often doubled as Minicomputers programmable in Tek Basic. The large ones offered a 4K vector space! Crazy good detail for the 70's. And one in good condition, operating in a reduced light room is beautiful to use.

My first manufacturing CAM software experience was on one of these. Used a fixed record length cassette so that many "files" could be accessed almost like a floppy disk drive. User data went right to the paper tape puncher / reader. 1200 baud punch, reads could be faster, up to 9600, if one had a good reader unit.

One ran applications from that cassette and stored and used user data from the paper tape.

But I digress!

Right near the end, Tek managed to get both storage graphics and dynamic refresh capable graphics, both in a different color. I only got to use one of those one time. I loved it because many different work flows were possible.

Man, for the chance to code a UI on one today!

One last thought: in my view vector displays are best on a CRT, mostly because of the image contrast and speed possible, but great vector experiences can also be had on a wall, or perhaps a screen with some coating to bring out the best possible.

We may yet see vectors appear from time to time in these and other ways simply because of how great they are. Hope so, and building a small, color capable one using a low power laser and screen with coatings sure to deliver motion trails is on ky bucket list.