Gadgetory

the Xbox 1x and the ps4 Pro are the latest offerings from Microsoft and Sony offering all kinds of fancy features like 4k gaming and HDR support but the real question is can either them give you a true arcade experience it's your own personal arcade a high performance system with a built-in game plus a whole collection of arcade cartridges so if you're into video games forget the TV get in the back light pen and 3d image are available now the ps4 pro on the Xbox my necks are impressive it all with their 4k I mean what is work here really it's basically just that it displays somewhere around 8 billion pixels cool the Vectrex on the other hand doesn't even need any pixels because it relies on an entirely different method of display technology called vector graphics now if you had heard of the vector X this is a system that came out back in 1982 was released by a company called general consumer electronics and at the time that it was released this thing was a big hit for all of the year but until the game crash happened but that's a whole other story we'll get to later the point is this was an entirely different approach to home gaming systems that no one else had really tackled before thanks to its unique approach to graphics a style of display that was really only used in some popular arcade games like asteroids what's really interesting cool about the vector X is how vector displays differ from raster displays which is what we've kind of gotten used to over the years a raster is something where it's using pixel by pixel technology refreshing multiple lines to create one full image a vector display on the other hand relies on a constant electron beam that is only lighting up specific coordinates on the screen so instead of trying to do a whole image constantly it's just lighting up the important parts and leaving the rest of it blank this results in a much cleaner and crisper image than any raster display has done of course this also limits you to just having lines now at this point you might be thinking to yourself Kevin this comparison is really stupid clearly you just want an excuse to rant about some retro machine I've never heard of now while the vetrix does make use of the clearly superior display method when it comes to the hard Tech Specs it does lag a little bit behind now both the ps4 and Xbox one X do make use of processors from AMD with the ps4 pro clocked at 2.1 gigahertz and the Xbox one X at 2.3 gigahertz meanwhile the vetrix is working with an older processor from Motorola about 35 years old that runs at one point five megahertz as for RAM the ps4 pro does of course have 90 gigabytes the Xbox one X has 12 and the vetrix is rocking a solid one kilobyte now of course the most important aspect of system is what its graphics card escape flow of and lately the main way people have kept track of this is through teraflops so the PS are Pro is capable of 4.2 teraflops Xbox one x6 teraflops very impressive the Victrix on the other hand does not apply because it doesn't have a graphics card at all because once again superior display technology does not need one game as I've always said Hardware alone is not the important thing though what really matters is what game each system is gonna let you play and whether or not it's exclusive now the Xbox one x2 the ps4 Pro have a lot of titles in common but lots of great exclusives as well lots of stuff come and play to this year like Co Thieves on the Xbox and you've got a warped PlayStation but the Vectrex on the other hand is rockin an entire solid library of 29 games all of which are completely unique to the system and not only does it have all these exclusives it also boasts one of the rarest games ever made mister Boston's clean sweep a special edition version of the game clean sweep which is very clearly not pac-man which featured advertisements for liquor and what's really important about the exclusivity of these games is that once again this display technology is entirely different than any other console so even if there's game with similar mechanics it's not going to look or feel quite the same way it does on the Vectrex it's actually really weird how this looks because the smoothness of motion is not it is just an entirely different display technology than what we've kind of grown accustomed to like I'm weirdly Saban's then again it's also just a bunch of lines if a quad sees the game actually has like some sense of physics like have a little drag and stuff when you turn this is one of those games that reminds you how spoiled you are when a game just lets you hold the fire button and not have to press it every single time on up oh can teleport oh god what do we have let's try Armour attack that's more colorful I love how you can tell by the way that this is an old system because the power button is also the sound so you turn it and then you keep turning it to make it louder I think one of the really cool things but how they approach making the system though was how they differentiated the games it wasn't just a matter of getting a cart that placed something different but how each of them came with these little slips that actually changed the whole interface of the vetrix itself and also double that's like a little instruction mail it's just a really neat idea it really does turn it almost into like just a little tiny arcade cabinet like my brain keeps anticipating that things aren't going to move as fast as they do or be as smooth and then I start doing stuff and and then we have another insert for Star Trek the motion picture I bet this is totally gonna be about peaceful space exploration and making friends this is not an all about making friends old school yes kind of turret this is so weird how they just try to get these ideas across nope nope nope nope nope it's really like I wonder how much of a difference having is like a little target and stuff makes I'm gonna take it out let's see how the game looks without it it's much more dull winning really white playing this is really interesting because then I definitely have all the different like home consoles that have been made and you know going back and playing retro stuff this is completely different because it uses such a different display technology and is based on kind of just an entirely different premise than we've kind of gotten accustomed to which makes it like a really unique experience even holding up to kinda just playing games today that come out having this different method of display just gives it this feeling that isn't really captured with you know traditional pixelation type stuff it makes a lot of sense that this did really well when it very first came out it just had really unfortunate timing when it came to market and completely derailed the whole concept really decide now as for the physical design of these systems I will have to say that the ps4 pro and the Xbox 1x both do an excellent job of being pretty systems but they entirely sacrifice function perform the Vectrex on the other hand is often your way to store your controller as part of the system it is a built-in TV screen and it has a handle making it portable does your xbox 1x have a handle if it said more dammit so what is this amazing system going to cost you well as we know the ps4 pearl runs for $400 the Xbox one Express for $500 the vetrix on the other hand when it originally launched in 1982 ran for $200 which sadly caused inflation that number changes pushing up to now a value of about $500 a little bit over so bad on par with the Xbox 1x however that is not the price that stayed at forever basically when it first came out the system sold really well Milton Bradley bought the company took over started selling more of them and then the game crash happened Milton Bradley got bought out and the vetrix was now worth well not much money at all and was then selling for $50 putting it at a modern-day value about 126 pretty fair honestly though and you're actually searching for old-school systems like this it's gonna run you for somewhere around $300 a little over if it's in good condition a lot more than that if you find it with the box the vetrix is a really cool and unique part of gaming history because it's a system that tried to do something different than the rest of its competition and for a brief time did a really good job at it at least until a certain games crash happened that ruined well everything while vector displays may have been due from the start thanks to the fact that raster displays would eventually do things like sprites and polygons and all kinds of fancier looking stuff it still offered a unique experience unlike anything else of its competition it's the only system to offer this kind of interface that was a home system with an incorporated screen and I think that's so important to recognize because I think for a little while now the industry got so focused on just the competition for higher resolutions higher frame rates all that kind of stuff and lately we're kind of seeing a bit of a shift again where Nintendo did something different and it resonated with people and I think that's what really shows kind of the spirit of what gamers want cool innovative fun things that are different