All Good Things

GCE Vectrex - Homebrew - 1996

All Good Things was the fourth release from Classic Game Creations. It is a compilation cartridge, comprised of clones of four earlier games and a bonus hidden fifth game. Contains: Space Invaders Part 2 Rockaroids Spike's Water Balloons Vectris (aka Vectrex Blocks) 23 Matches At the time of its release, All Good Things was the very first 16K cartridge for the Vectrex.

Birds of Prey

GCE Vectrex - Homebrew - 1999

Birds of Prey is a Vectrex game similar to the Galaxian series, some might call it a homebrew port of Phoenix. The gameplay is similar to Galaga and consists of five waves that simply loop with increasing difficulty. Instead of using the analog stick you press buttons 1-2 to move left and right, while button 4 fires. It takes a few minutes to adjust but once you do you'll find the control scheme works fine. By pressing button 3 you can activate a shield once per wave (or re-use it if you lose a life) and this protects you from incoming fire and enemies. It's very handy and you'll want to use it when you're surrounded. The first wave sees you trying to blast down small birds but you can only fire one bullet at a time. The birds can spray multiple bullets at once and they often swoop in on you. The difficulty is high so don't expect to be eased in! The second wave is more of the same but this time you can fire two shots simultaneously which makes things more manageable. The third and fourth waves are the weakest as they feature large, flapping birds that take forever to shoot as their hit box is small (you need to hit them dead-centre). While they occasionally fly towards your ship they tend to only move from side-to-side making these waves easier than the preceding ones. The last wave is interesting as it features a boss battle, seldom seen on the system. You face a giant mother ship with a gaping hole in the centre; you instinctively know where to shoot but it's protected by swarms of birds that try to attack you. If you manage to beat the boss it explodes in a satisfying manner! As this is a high score game it's tempting to continually fire your weapon at will. However, I found it's better to be strategic and follow attack patterns as enemies will frequently line themselves up for a perfect shot.

Moon Lander

GCE Vectrex - Homebrew - 1997

Moon Lander is a clone of Lunar Lander for the Vectrex. It was developed by RAT and released in 1997. Moon Lander was inspired by Lunar Lander, although the player had to contend with changing gravity and landscapes, wind, and troublesome satellites as well in the later levels. The game featured cinematics of the player's ship lifting off after a successful landing and has an ending, rather than Lunar Lander ending only once the player would eventually run out of credits (to keep on adding fuel to their ship) or they just flat-out ran out of fuel during a game without adding any more credits to replenish their ship's fuel tank.

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.

Space Invasion

ColecoVision - Homebrew - 1998

After many frustrating years, scientists have finally made contact with biengs from another planet. That's the good news. The bad news is that these aliens are bent on conquering the galaxy one planet at a time. After discorering the existence of the Earth, the aliens send troops to our world in the hope of enslaving it. These soldiers are determined to reach the surface of our planet, and if they succeed, the human race is doomed. Fortunately, the people of Earth are prepared for this assault, building protective barriers over key military outposts and manufacturing powerful mobile cannons known as "bases". The bases are our best defense against the invaders, -but beware... The enemy won't quit until they've won, and they'll destroy everything that stands in their way... - And that's also including you !. The Rainbow effect... If the final aliens you kill are in the bottom 2 rows, you get a fireworks display and 500 bonus points. If it happens to be the bottom, left-most alien, you get fireworks and a 1,000 point bonus.

Star Fortress

ColecoVision - Homebrew - 1997

Star Fortress is based on the early 80's style space shooter games, where you (or a second player) attempt to penetrate the shields of a heavily armored space ship. You can manuever your ship around the fortress and shoot at the 3 revolving energy shields. As you weaken pieces of the shields, these pieces will break off. Once having cleared a path to the center, you can attempt to land a shot at the mother ship and destroy it. But watch out ! Also revolving around the shields are energy balls which will break loose and try to home in on your ship. You can attempt to out manuever the energy balls or shoot them down. Once you break through the inner shields, the mother ship will fire huge energy balls which you can only outrun, but not destroy. When you destroy the mother ship, a new level will begin and increase in skill difficulty.

Vaboom! / Vectrace

GCE Vectrex - Homebrew - 2000

Also known as Ronen's Game Cart, Vaboom!/Vectrace is a bit of an unusual entry, as there aren't a lot of racing games for the system as it is, as far as Vectrace goes. And it might also seem to be a bit unusual for another Kaboom! clone to be made for the Vectrex as well. So this odd pairing of games actually makes this cartridge stand out a bit.

Vecmania

GCE Vectrex - Homebrew - 1999

Vecmania has the largest amount of games for a homebrew compilation for the Vectrex, with a full seven games (one hidden) and two unfinished demos, being clones of the arcade games of Tempest, Star Wars, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Eliminator, Breakout, Discs Of Tron, Asteroids and Phoenix. The games can be scrolled through at the main menu by moving the joystick or D-pad left and right and then chosen by pressing up on the joystick or D-pad. The main menu can be returned to by pressing three on the controller when the player is on an individual game's title screen (except for the demos). The games are: Birds of Prey Breakout Patriots Remix Repulse Rockaroids Remix: Third Rock Star Fire Spirits Vector Vaders The Director's Cut