How many vector games were there ?

Found these pics from Vectorbeam Scramble on the fore-mentioned thread:

Apparently the owner says he has the actual PCB too, so hopefully at least the ROMs are in safe hands. I get the impression it's kind of a vector version of Break-out.
 

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Bummer :( I hope it didn't end up in the trash or the data on the EPROMs rotted away, I absolutely HATE IT when a game goes "extinct". If you run into him again bend his ear a little bit about it, at the very least someone else in the hobby or in MAME will no doubt pay him serious cash for it, like 4 figure sized cash like I've seen one of a kind, highly sought after boards go for.
 
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Interesting, the poster in the thread says the PCB he has only runs attract mode but the article says it was a functioning game that was tested at an arcade show and shows a picture of an actual cabinet. Perhaps a problem with the PCB ?

Sounds like something worth looking into, would be pretty cool if it turns out that it's just a hardware problem and the ROMs are in fact complete and playable.
 
Interesting, the poster in the thread says the PCB he has only runs attract mode but the article says it was a functioning game that was tested at an arcade show and shows a picture of an actual cabinet. Perhaps a problem with the PCB ?

Could be the code is there (in the chips) but perhaps edited to only show the attract mode for some reason. All the more reason to archive the chips and share the code so that people can check it out.



Sadly not likely, he's not in the hobby anymore so not sure what happened to the board.

He's your friend... can't you ask him?
 
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OK, I'll type some too ...

Various Asteroids clones (Asterock, Meteor, Meteoroid, etc)

.... etc etc etc ...

Was there more than one game called Meteoroid(s)? The one I'm aware of is a raster game.
 
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Has a QB-3 pcb ever surfaced? The marquee was found and on eBay at one time.

I don't know, but a few schematics are shown up, I saved copies of them, I always try to "hoard" any pictures, schematics and info on rare stuff whenever I come across it. Don't hold me to this but I think it uses a standard Cinematronics vector main pcb, a sound and one or two extra boards for like color and extra EPROMs.

Are there any pictures of an actual marquee? The only artwork I've ever seen for it is the crappy drawing on the flyer.
 
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Sounds like something worth looking into, would be pretty cool if it turns out that it's just a hardware problem and the ROMs are in fact complete and playable.

Guys, there was never a board set or EPROMs found, only the source code on a fan-fold printout and three pages of preliminary schematics. It's also unclear whether that printout was a listing of a working version. I'm guessing that it is an earlier version since it looks like the documentation is not in sync. The boardset shown in the other thread was a hand wired copy with some changes to make it more workable. An e-mail with one of the programmers led me to believe that all the prototype hardware was destroyed.
 
Guys, there was never a board set or EPROMs found, only the source code on a fan-fold printout and three pages of preliminary schematics. It's also unclear whether that printout was a listing of a working version. I'm guessing that it is an earlier version since it looks like the documentation is not in sync. The boardset shown in the other thread was a hand wired copy with some changes to make it more workable. An e-mail with one of the programmers led me to believe that all the prototype hardware was destroyed.

Bummer, do you think there's enough in the source code to work with that someone who knows what they're doing could debug it, or is it such a train wreck that it's hopeless?
 
The Video Games article has a photo of a guy PLAYING the game at a trade show. Obviously development went beyond just a few static screens, judging from the description:
"The Rocket Racer shown at the A.O.E. is still being developed, and no release date has been set. In fact, Rock-Ola wanted to gather comments and criticism at the show so they could fine-tune it. Well, if anyone is still listening, the graphics are good, the sound acceptable, and the play is excellent."

So, there's more to the game than what you have. Whether or not it still exists is another question.
 
Bummer, do you think there's enough in the source code to work with that someone who knows what they're doing could debug it, or is it such a train wreck that it's hopeless?

Wow. "someone who knows what they're doing could debug it". That's some real strong incentive to pick this project up again.

lack of free time & low priority project != lack of ability

BTW, the code is all there, it's just not working completely. There may be bugs in the copy that I was testing or it could be my interpretation of some of the more obscure macros that are listed.
 
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