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Comment by kick | Hacker News Reader

Vector displays are one of my favorite things! If you ever get a chance to play with one, I highly recommend it. Playing with a friend's Tektronix terminal was stunning for me.

The Vectrex was an amazing little console, and it's a shame it didn't take off.

There's an alternative world in which computing never got overtaken with the urge to put photorealistic pictures on every surface, and that world is so much neater than the one we're living in.

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I used to own a Space Duel cocktail cabinet, a vector game that deserved to be much better known. Think of a color version of Asteroids with 3D spinning objects and other cool enemies. It has a two player co-op mode where each player's ship was chained together, so one person hitting thrust would propel the other as well. The game's difficulty level was spot on, and it made for some of the most intense gaming experiences I've ever had. Good times.

https://youtu.be/CwY5znUeaJ4?t=60

I remember playing that game at the arcade as a kid. It was a lot of fun. If I recall correctly, some versions (or levels?) had pretty intense gravity effects.

Thank you for sharing! That's really captivating!

I was obsessed with vector displays as a kid. The standup versions of Star Wars and tempest looked so futuristic in comparison to the other stuff out at the time. Vectrex also looked a whole lot cooler than the Atari 2600 but I guess people like color and those overlays did not quite cut it :p.

The tiny all-in-one monitor didn't do it any favors. People wanted to play on their TV, but that obviously wasn't going to work with a vector-based system.

I was working on a game for awhile with that exact alternate universe as the basic premise—it's a fascinating thought experiment

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