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Vectrex
The Vectrex is a vector display-based home video game console–the only one ever designed and released for the home market, developed by Smith Engineering. It was first released for the North America market in November 1982 and then Europe and Japan in 1983. Originally manufactured by General Consumer Electronics, it was later licensed to Milton Bradley after they acquired the company. Bandai released the system in Japan. The Vectrex, in contrast to other video game systems at the time, does not need to be hooked up to a television set. It has an integrated monochrome CRT monitor. A detachable wired control pad can be folded into the lower base of the console. Games came with translucent color overlays to place over the screen. Peripherals include a pair of 3D goggles known as the "3D Imager" and a light pen for drawing directly on the screen. The ''Asteroids''-inspired ''Mine Storm'' is built into the system. The console was conceived by John Ross, of Smith Engineering, in la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vectrex Vector Logo
The Vectrex is a vector display-based home video game console–the only one ever designed and released for the home market, developed by Smith Engineering. It was first released for the North America market in November 1982 and then Europe and Japan in 1983. Originally manufactured by General Consumer Electronics, it was later licensed to Milton Bradley after they acquired the company. Bandai released the system in Japan. The Vectrex, in contrast to other video game systems at the time, does not need to be hooked up to a television set. It has an integrated monochrome CRT monitor. A detachable wired control pad can be folded into the lower base of the console. Games came with translucent color overlays to place over the screen. Peripherals include a pair of 3D goggles known as the "3D Imager" and a light pen for drawing directly on the screen. The ''Asteroids''-inspired '' Mine Storm'' is built into the system. The console was conceived by John Ross, of Smith Engineering, in l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Generation Of Video Game Consoles
In the history of video games, the second generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable ''platforms'' of the second generation include the Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision. The generation began in November 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. This was followed by the Atari 2600 in 1977, Magnavox Odyssey² in 1978, Intellivision in 1980 and then the Emerson Arcadia 2001, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex,Barton, Matt and Loguidice, Bill. (2007)A History of Gaming Platforms: The Vectrex, Gamasutra. all in 1982. By the end of the era, there were over 15 different consoles. It coincided with, and was partly fuelled by, the golden age of arcade video games. This peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium resulted in many games for second generation home consoles being ports of arcade games. ''Space Invaders'', the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mine Storm
''Mine Storm'' (also written as ''MineStorm'') is a multidirectional shooter similar to Atari, Inc.'s 1979 ''Asteroids'' arcade game. It was published in 1982 by General Consumer Electronics as the built-in game for the Vectrex system. ''Mine Storm'' was implemented by John Hall. Gameplay Developed by General Consumer Electronics, Vectrex's manufacturer, it was built into the game system. The gameplay is very similar to that of Atari's ''Asteroids''. The game begins with a large enemy ship dropping mines onto the field as an ominous jingle plays, and moves from the top to the bottom of the screen, where it disappears. The player's ship starts in the middle of the field with 5 lives. Numerous mines then start popping up. The player must destroy all of the mines in order to progress to the next minefield. All of the mines can be destroyed with one shot, or hit with the player's ship, costing the player a life. There are 4 types of mines. The original mines are stationary, then secon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Commercial Failures In Video Games
The list of commercial failures in video games includes any video game software on any platform, and any video game console hardware, of all time. As a hit-driven business, the great majority of the video game industry's software releases have been commercial disappointments. In the early 21st century, industry commentators made these general estimates: 10% of published games generated 90% of revenue; that around 3% of PC games and 15% of console games have global sales of more than 100,000 units per year, with even this level insufficient to make high-budget games profitable; and that about 20% of games make any profit. Some of these failure events have drastically changed the video game market since its origin in the late 1970s. For example, the failure of ''E.T.'' contributed to the video game crash of 1983. Some games, though commercial failures, are well received by certain groups of gamers and are considered cult games. Video game hardware failures 32X Unveiled by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motorola 6809
The Motorola 6809 ("''sixty-eight-oh-nine''") is an 8-bit microprocessor with some 16-bit features. It was designed by Motorola's Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. Although source compatible with the earlier Motorola 6800, the 6809 offered significant improvements over it and 8-bit contemporaries like the MOS Technology 6502, including a hardware multiplication instruction, 16-bit arithmetic, system and user stack registers allowing re-entrant code, improved interrupts, position-independent code and an orthogonal instruction set architecture with a comprehensive set of addressing modes. Among the most powerful 8-bit processors of its era, it was also much more expensive. In 1980 a 6809 in single-unit quantities was compared to for a Zilog Z80 and for a 6502. It was launched when a new generation of 16-bit processors were coming to market, like the Intel 8086, and 32-bit designs were on the horizon, including Motorola's own 68000. It was not feature competitiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector Monitor
A vector monitor, vector display, or calligraphic display is a display device used for computer graphics up through the 1970s. It is a type of CRT, similar to that of an early oscilloscope. In a vector display, the image is composed of drawn lines rather than a grid of glowing pixels as in raster graphics. The electron beam follows an arbitrary path tracing the connected sloped lines, rather than following the same horizontal raster path for all images. The beam skips over dark areas of the image without visiting their points. Some refresh vector displays use a normal phosphor that fades rapidly and needs constant refreshing 30-40 times per second to show a stable image. These displays, such as the Imlac PDS-1, require some local refresh memory to hold the vector endpoint data. Other storage tube displays, such as the popular Tektronix 4010, use a special phosphor that continues glowing for many minutes. Storage displays do not require any local memory. In the 1970s, both ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milton Bradley Company
Milton Bradley Company or simply Milton Bradley (MB) was an American board game manufacturer established by Milton Bradley in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1860. In 1920, it absorbed the game production of McLoughlin Brothers, formerly the largest game manufacturer in the United States. It became a division of Hasbro in 1984. History Foundation Milton Bradley found success making board games. In 1860, Milton Bradley moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, and set up the state's first color lithography shop. Its graphic design of Abraham Lincoln sold very well, until Lincoln grew his beard and rendered the likeness out-of-date. Struggling to find a new way to use his lithography machine, Bradley visited his friend George Tapley. Tapley challenged him to a game, most likely an old English game. Bradley conceived the idea of making a purely American game. He created ''The Checkered Game of Life'', which had players move along a track from Infancy to Happy Old Age, in which t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Instrument AY-3-8910
The AY-3-8910 is a 3-voice programmable sound generator (PSG) designed by General Instrument in 1978, initially for use with their 16-bit CP1610 or one of the PIC1650 series of 8-bit microcomputers. The AY-3-8910 and its variants were used in many arcade games—Konami's ''Gyruss'' contains five—and pinball machines as well as being the sound chip in the Intellivision and Vectrex video game consoles, and the Amstrad CPC, Oric-1, Colour Genie, Elektor TV Games Computer, MSX, and later ZX Spectrum home computers. It was also used in the Mockingboard and Cricket sound cards for the Apple II and the Speech/Sound Cartridge for the TRS-80 Color Computer. After General Instrument's spinoff of Microchip Technology in 1987, the chip was sold for a few years under the Microchip brand. It was also manufactured under license by Yamaha (with a selectable clock divider pin and a double-resolution and double-rate volume envelope table) as the YM2149F; the Atari ST uses this versi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asteroids (video Game)
''Asteroids'' is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases. ''Asteroids'' was conceived during a meeting between Logg and Rains, who decided to use hardware developed by Howard Delman previously used for '' Lunar Lander''. Asteroids was based on an unfinished game titled ''Cosmos''; its physics model, control scheme, and gameplay elements were derived from '' Spacewar!'', '' Computer Space'', and ''Space Invaders'' and refined through trial and error. The game is rendered on a vector display in a two-dimensional view that wraps around both screen axes. ''Asteroids'' was one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOS Technology 6522
The 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter (VIA) is an integrated circuit that was designed and manufactured by MOS Technology as an I/O port controller for the MOS Technology 6502, 6502 family of microprocessors. It provides two bidirectional 8-bit parallel I/O ports, two 16-bit timers (one of which can also operate as an event counter), and an 8-bit shift register for serial communications or data conversion between serial and parallel forms. The direction of each bit of the two I/O ports can be individually programmed. In addition to being manufactured by MOS Technology, the 6522 was second sourced by other companies including Rockwell International, Rockwell and Synertek. The 6522 was widely used in computers of the 1980s, particularly Commodore International, Commodore's machines, and was also a central part of the designs of the Apple III, Oric#Oric-1, Oric-1 and Oric#Oric Atmos, Oric Atmos, BBC Micro, Sirius Systems Technology, Victor 9000/Sirius 1 and Macintosh, Apple Macintosh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Summer Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association, Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typically hosts presentations of new products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry. History The first CES was held in June 1967 in New York City. It was a spinoff from the Chicago Music Show, which, until then, had served as the main event for exhibiting consumer electronics. The event had 17,500 attenders and over 100 exhibitors; the kickoff speaker was Motorola chairman Bob Galvin. From 1978 to 1994, CES was held twice each year: once in January in Las Vegas known for ''Winter Consumer Electronics Show (WCES)'' and once in June in Chicago, known as ''Summer Consumer Electronics Show (SCES)''. The winter show was successfully held in Las Vegas in 1995 as planned. Howev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game Crash Of 1983
The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality, as well as waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers. Home video game revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent). The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end. Lasting about two years, the crash shook a then-booming video game industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing home computers and video game consoles. Analysts of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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