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Post by VectorX on Dec 31, 2012 17:18:58 GMT -5
Most consoles from back then, in general, still work well (except for the early ColecoVisions), as long as you don't mistreat them. Way the hell better than the piece of crap consoles of nowadays where people think it's justified to pay $150 a year or so for extended warranties, yet they usually turned their noses up at extended warranties with electronics in general for decades (go figure!).
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Post by woodentulip on Dec 31, 2012 18:36:23 GMT -5
I do have a mention about the Vector Graphics.
The Vectrex is cool, and for the most part, the vector graphics are OKAY.
The Cinematronics arcades were really good, and the king of Vector Graphics was the Tektronix series of 40xx series terminals.
The 4010/4012 were excellent vector terminals, and the 4052/4054 were essentially computers by themselves.
But for $199 a vectrex doing vector graphics was cool, but was current technologies in terms of computing at that time.
-sean
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Post by VectorX on Dec 31, 2012 20:05:30 GMT -5
But for $199 a vectrex doing vector graphics was cool, but was current technologies in terms of computing at that time. Yep. I'm not a tech person or anything, but I never agreed with some people saying "the Vectrex was ahead of its time", since vector graphics had been around for several years as it was. When arcade ports were coming out for the Atari 2600 that looked nothing like the original games, it was only a few years down the road (and especially with the advent of powerful home computers becoming available at a decent price in the early to mid 1980s) when the home gaming machines got more powerful and were able to start closing the gap on making more faithful ports. Maybe the only reason the Vectrex was ahead of its time (maybe) is because it was the only home vector system period. |
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Post by wyldephang on Jan 1, 2013 4:09:03 GMT -5
Most consoles from back then, in general, still work well (except for the early ColecoVisions), as long as you don't mistreat them. Way the hell better than the piece of crap consoles of nowadays where people think it's justified to pay $150 a year or so for extended warranties, yet they usually turned their noses up at extended warranties with electronics in general for decades (go figure!). I can attest to that, as I broke my first Xbox 360 while dusting underneath it. ;D The warranty center prepared a repair claim for my console, but discovered that the failure was impossible to fix, so they sent back a new unit with a different serial number. Six months later, this replacement console began to freeze in the middle of game sessions. So, I got another repair ticket and sent it back, but I received another broken console (with a faulty sound output) in return! That's three warranty repairs within the span of a single year, and a lot of frustration as one problem would give way to a deluge of other errors. Meanwhile, the rest of my consoles worked perfectly; the GameCube, Dreamcast, and Nintendo 64 all received equal play while the poor, battered Xbox 360 endured a long, arduous succession of repairs. Ultimately, the intrepid Xbox 360 recovered for a brief period of time, but it succumbed to a disc read failure--that's the fourth time, in case you lost track, that an Xbox 360 in my care has been rendered totally inoperable. Unfortunately, the disc read failure occurred out of warranty and I was stuck with the bill. So, in 2009, I purchased a replacement Xbox 360. It still works, I haven't played it since 2011 because I haven't felt any desire to pursue modern gaming! |
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Post by VectorX on Jan 1, 2013 12:57:11 GMT -5
That's pretty pathetic. It's too bad Microsoft ist such a gigantic company, finances-wise, or else they would have either shaped their products the hell up or (thankfully) gone out of business.
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Post by gliptitude on Jan 1, 2013 14:43:52 GMT -5
The 3D glasses were undoubtedly "ahead of their time". Maybe the lightpen too. If not from a technological standpoint, at least from a design and gaming standpoint.
I wasn't playing video games in 1982 so I never encountered Vectrex as a cutting edge system. It's just such an odd and clever combination, and totally gratifying to play. The archaic-ness makes it that much more exciting to me.
Everything is otherwise just so quick and easy and transparent these days, it seems like a magic trick watching Vectrex engage people the way that it does. With other "retro" systems there is a great degree of familiarity, and a recognizable sense that it is almost the same thing as current stuff, just much less powerful. ... Vectrex seems of a completely separate progression, and not measurable on the same scale.
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Post by VectorX on Jan 1, 2013 17:48:21 GMT -5
The 3D glasses were undoubtedly "ahead of their time". Maybe the lightpen too. If not from a technological standpoint, at least from a design and gaming standpoint. Yeah, definitely, especially if Sega had to indeed withdraw their ads for their 3-D glasses years later, claiming they were the first, as I hadn't heard that before until the last year or so. Everything is otherwise just so quick and easy and transparent these days, it seems like a magic trick watching Vectrex engage people the way that it does. With other "retro" systems there is a great degree of familiarity, and a recognizable sense that it is almost the same thing as current stuff, just much less powerful. ... Vectrex seems of a completely separate progression, and not measurable on the same scale. Yep, especially since no other system could do vectors! |
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