Anybody who played on classic cabinets like Asteroids or Lunar Lander in the arcades knows that those games' unique, glowing-line graphics were impossible to replicate on standard TV video game consoles. That's because those and many other arcade games used vector monitors, which use a fast-moving electron beam to draw images made up of sharp, straight white lines on a phosphorescent screen. While these vector monitors have trouble with things like color and solid, filled objects, they can create easy-to-rotate figures that were much sharper and cleaner than the low-resolution raster graphics of the time.

In 1982, a company called General Consumer Electric brought the vector graphics experience to the home for the first and only time with the Vectrex, a short-lived, semi-portable game console that was actually came with a small vector monitor of its own. Now, 30 years later, Rantmedia Games is trying to bring the vector experience home again with Vectrex Regeneration, a remarkably authentic iPad emulator for the largely forgotten system.

Regeneration is a bit of a labor of love for Anton Faulconbridge, who was inspired to pursue the project after seeing an iCade and noting its passing resemblance to the Vectrex he enjoyed so much in his youth. "It's the kind of app that I knew that I wanted and I knew that I would buy in an absolute heartbeat if someone else had done it," Faulconbridge told Ars Technica. But it's more than just nostalgia. "I think if you had a reasonable childhood, you kind of look back and think it was amazing, but that's not the reason here. The games are actually good and I think they actually translate well."

Indeed, the games on the Vectrex are quite different from the other retro gaming collections on iOS, characterized by high-resolution line drawings with smooth rotations and vibrant animations. The Vectrex's 28 game library was primarily made up of thinly-veiled copies of popular arcade games of the time, but what many in the title lack in originality they make up for in pure addictiveness and quality design.

Emulation issues

Recreating the sharp, glowing lines of a real Vectrex on a standard LCD display presents a challenge for anyone taking on this kind of emulation project, Faulconbridge noted. "It's a totally unique system, it is so analog, this phosphor screen that kind of pulses, it's almost alive, and it's incredibly difficult to turn something that feels so analog into something that is actually digital."

That said, Faulconbridge adds the display technology on the latest iOS devices is getting to the point where an LCD screen can display lines that are nearly as crisp and clean as a vector display. "The retina displays that we've got now, it's almost the perfect time for this vector system really, because we're finally getting to the point where we're getting closer than ever to the look and feel of the original vector graphics," he said. "I think it's the best out there in terms of the results that you get, and when Apple gives us an even higher resolution screen we'll do even better."

Creating an authentic experience also means replicating some of the Vectrex's less desirable features. Because the Vectrex's oscillating electron beam can only be in one place at one time, there's a noticeable flicker as you watch the system actually draw each frame of the scene at a rate slightly slower than the human eye can process. This flickering is a key component of the authentic Vectrex experience for fans of the original system, but it might be frustrating (not to mention seizure-inducing) to a modern audience without the benefit of nostalgia.

For the iOS emulator, Faulconbridge came to a compromise that lowered the flickering but didn't remove it altogether. "The reduction in flicker is down to using some crazy complicated shader code that persists the lines on the screen for a little longer than they would have been on the original Vectrex," he said. "We wanted to make it as accessible as possible to the widest possible audience. While lots of flicker might be authentic, it's not necessarily something you'd notice missing if it's not there."

And then there are the little bits of retro authenticity that don't come from intentional design, but from the physical vagaries of the old hardware itself. "One of the things that's evident on the original system is, due to the bad design of it, a lot of them will hum—you turn them on and there's this kind of constant hum," Faulconbridge pointed out to us. "We were talking to the guys following us on Twitter and through the web site and we said 'Do you want the hum in there?' and about 95% of them said yes. So we've made it an option. It's not on by default, but you can turn it on if you want it."

Then there are the bits of presentation that had nothing to do with the hardware. Vectrex games came packaged with colorful plastic overlays that were meant to provide the sort of background and border art that the system itself just couldn't produce. Though Faulconbridge said he found peeling and reapplying these overlays to be too much of a hassle in his youth, being able to apply them automatically on the iPad adds something to the experience, to a point. "We had some strange requests: some people saying they'd like to be able to use the wrong overlays on different games.' he noted. "Why would you do that?"

The homebrew community

Nobody seems to know just how many Vectrex units were sold all those decades ago. The system largely flopped at its original $200 retail price, and was quickly being liquidated in bargain bins during the video game crash of 1983. Working units aren't impossible to find these days, and can be had on eBay for about $100.

But despite its small sales and cultural impact, Faulconbridge notes that there's still a dedicated audience of Vectrex enthusiasts out there, who have stuck with the system for decades. While there were only 28 commercial games made for the original Vectrex, homebrew coders have extended that library with dozens of new titles, for use on PC emulators and also as manufactured cartridges. These titles range from recreations of familiar arcade titles to real-time strategy games to a version of the Logo programming language.

Some homebrew Vectrex games even use programming tricks to surpass what was possible on the original cartridges, offering synthesized speech or surpassing the 4K memory limit, for instance. "A lot of the original games were done in a very short space of time," Faulconbridge points out. "You'd have the manager come along and say 'you've got to ship this game and you've got a week to do it' where the guys that are doing it now, it's more about pushing things to the edge, and they really are pushing things to the edge of what the hardware is capable of, but they've got time to really perfect it and get it right." Four of these homebrew titles are already available through Vectrex Regeneration, and more will be offered both as free and paid downloads in the future, Faulconbridge said.

With total control of the Vectrex name and branding, Faulconbridge said he's had some thoughts about tracking down some old vector monitors and trying to create a new line of actual Vectrex hardware. For now, though, emulation is also a way to preserve the memory of those games without risking the original hardware. As spokesperson David Tractenberg says, every time he turns on his launch era Vectrex, he worries that "a stray piece of dust has gone in there when I turn it on and it's going to go 'Boosh' and that'll be that... Right now my Vectrex is like a Schroedinger's cat, it's both dead and alive at the same time on my shelf." With Regeneration, Tractenberg says, he can "recreate his vector days as a kid without risking his actual Vectrex."