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Because there was no internet when I was a kid, my barometer for what was cool in the world of gadgets, games and other nerdiness was the son of a friend of my mother's. He was friendly enough to loan his stuff out, but it didn't stop my insane jealousy from festering. Still, it did mean I managed to play with some interesting kit, and if anyone wasn't paying too much attention, I could pretend it might be mine. Vicarious geekery can start at an early age y'know?

The first thing I ever remember borrowing was something called Microvision. It was made by Milton Bradley, most famous for board games but in the late 70s and early 80s, they also dabbled in some interesting electronic games and toys.

Microvision might well claim to be the first proper cart based handheld gaming system. Dating all the way back to 1979, it was probably about 1.5 times longer and wider than the original GameBoy, pretty unwieldily for a kid's hands really. But in actual fact, you can probably consider it to be the original GameBoy, because it's screen was also monochrome, albeit at a much lower resolution.

MB obviously had great plans for this machine, but only about 15 games were ever produced. The game carts themselves were actually flimsy plastic things which snapped onto the facia of the main unit, so flimsy that I do remember breaking the tabs that held it in place on one of the games I borrowed. Oops. But what's most peculiar when compared to today's handhelds, or even the 18 or so year old GameBoy, is that the Microvision unit itself was nothing but a set of controls and an LCD. All the processors and memory etc were on each cartridge. Therefore it was most likely that the cartridge's manufacturing costs put paid to the Microvision ever taking off in any serious way.

This guy's next series of handheld marvels came from Tomy. Looking like a cross between a pair of binoculars and a View-Master (Google it!), to a 7 year old Tomy-Tronic 3D games seemed to be from another planet. In retrospect, the principle behind these games wasn't that far removed from Nintendo's Game & Watch handheld business of the time, where the player's movement was restricted to predetermined positions on an LCD screen - hitting left or right etc would just light up a new segment of the screen representing your player's new position. The difference here came presumably thanks to the binocular form factor. Because each eye's was isolated by the left and right eye piece, the LCD could be displayed in stereoscopic fashion, therefore giving the illusion of a 3D playing field. Oh and stereo sound - with a speaker right next to each ear! Most of the games were of the dodge and move variety, eg Thundering Turbo was a 3D racer which distilled, was just a case of weaving a car in and out of traffic with a series of left - right movements. But the likes of this had never been seen before, let alone in three full dimensions. I'm quite convinced these served as some inspiration for Nintendo's VirtualBoy, but perhaps the less said about that the better.

Probably the only reason I was loaned this stuff was because my temporary benefactor had moved on to bigger and better things. And when it comes to the next item, bigger and better are probably still a bit of understatement.

Again from Milton Bradley, looking like no home system had looked before, and in my opinion technically the greatest ever 8 bit console, came the Vectrex system.

Traditionally, if not almost entirely, consoles were and still are hooked up to television, and display rasterized 'pixel-based' images to make up the graphics on screen. The Vectrex system came with its monitor, which only displayed vector graphics. There'd been some vector graphic based games in the arcades up to this point, Asteroids being an early one. But game developers soon realised that because vector graphics - limited to simple lines at the time - were so economical when it came to processing power, shifting them around at incredible - and more importantly believable speeds presented no problems at all. Games such as Battlezone and the original Star Wars trilogy soon followed using this technique, achieving effects pixels would have to wait years to accomplish.

And the Vectrex system brought it into the home. The display itself was monochrome, but the games came with screen overlays that would give the illusion of colour. The joystick and - count them - four buttons came out of the unit via a coiled telephone cord. The unit looked like a miniature arcade cabinet, but unlike the basic tabletop games Nintendo and Namco, the Vectrex felt as though it might be just as powerful as its big brother. And it was. Some of the games ran at speeds that rival consoles could only imagine. It even had its own 3D add on, a stereoscopic face mask that was supported by a decent number of games. Upwards of 30 games were produced for the system in the short time it was available on the market.

A latecomer amongst the original set of home consoles, it was sadly only available for a year or so before the great videogame crash of 1983, which saw the end of almost every major player in the market, including the Vectrex.

But what's definitely a testament to how great the system was, homebrew games have been continually written for the system, no doubt mainly played on PC based emulators. Not surprising, thanks to it's short life on the shelves of toy stores, working systems can cost you a small fortune on eBay.

But what happened next, considering the market crash, and my friend's habit for keeping current? Well he did what almost everyone else did, he got himself a home computer. For the next few years, it wasn't so much about having the newest machine, more the newest software that would run on the same machine - the same machine I too had. Finally I'd managed to level the playing field, and I wouldn't have to be so jealous anymore. In fact, it turned out that he wound up borrowing games from me. But still, even today, I'd give it all to have my very own Vectrex. One can dream...

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

Vicarious geekery

July 28, 2008

By Andy Barratt - G4 Canada