Man Goes Down

Atari 2600 - Homebrew - 2006

For those who don't know, I've been writing homebrews for the Vectrex for a little while, Protector (Defender clone, nothing to do with the Jag game of the same title) probably being the most well known. Anyway, tucked away in the initial limited edition release of Protector was a hidden bonus game Spike Goes Down, a game which is well suited to the Atari 2600 hardware. So, I recently started work on the 2600 version (title tbc) and here's how it's looking so far... I've only just started putting in level data, so you can't get very far. (Blue level will finish you off.) With regard to the collectible objects, picking up 4 fruits in sequence will open up the power-ups. (I haven't drawn the 4th fruit yet, so for now it shows as a bronze question mark). The skateboard increases speed (on the x-axis) for a short time - good for negotiating levels with long platforms/small gaps. The down arrow increases gravity slightly - you need to collect several of them to really feel the effect. The red stop sign temporarily slows the scrolling, the silver question mark doesn't do anything yet. Miss a fruit or power-up and you have to start back at fruit 1. I'll almost certainly change the way this works, and the stop sign doesn't really do much for the gameplay so I'll probably ditch that.

Protector

GCE Vectrex - Homebrew - 2003

The Vectrex community was taken by surprise in 2003 when the announcement of the upcoming, original release of Protector LE was revealed, as Alex Herbert envisioned that the arcade classic of Defender could be brought to the Vectrex. A downloadable video was posted as well, showing that the intense gameplay from the original did indeed seem to be possible after all. It quickly sold out of its 100 copies in less than three weeks of release. It also came with the Spike Goes Down game included with it as well as an unlockable bonus. Then later on that year, the unlimited edition of Protector was released, although with a different game included, being Y*A*S*I, which stands for "Yet Another Space Invaders", as that game was a clone of that arcade classic (hence the title of this release being Protector/Y*A*S*I this time around). Again this was a bit of a surprise within the Vectrex community, as a lot of gamers in general didn't know that the Vectrex is capable of producing raster graphics as well, which Y*A*S*I proved by looking almost exactly like it's arcade cousin, having bitmapped, rather than vector graphics.

Verzerk

GCE Vectrex - ROM Hack - 2002

Verzerk is a modified version of Berzerk, which adds speech to the game. Has that robotic voice during the 'attract mode', and various phrases from the original arcade game. One player only (no two player option as the original Berzerk on the vectrex has).