why so few vector games

Mizzou

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I love vector games. They way they make the game just pop at you. So why did they make so many more raster then vector? It seems like the vectors just sort of died off mid 80's.
 
honestly I just think they were able to do more visually with a standard crt raster monitor than with a vector monitor. Vector monitors do look awesome and stand out in that special way but I believe they are somewhat graphically limited.
 
honestly I just think they were able to do more visually with a standard crt raster monitor than with a vector monitor.

This.

I love vector games, too - but the monitors are what they are.
 
The author of Major Havoc has said that he feels it would have been much more successful if the game was Raster instead of Vector.

Arcades just stopped buying Vector games as they were considered old tech.
 
The author of Major Havoc has said that he feels it would have been much more successful if the game was Raster instead of Vector.

Arcades just stopped buying Vector games as they were considered old tech.

While probably correct I doubt it would have become as sought after as it is if it were not a vector. To me MH always felt like a vector version of some of the side scrolling games that came after it. Think a double dragon or something with regards to format although I'm sure there's a much better example. I really think the vector aspect in that style of game is what made it unique.
 
In the early days you could do more graphically with a vector game than with a raster game. However by 1984 the raster technology was producing games that looked a lot more impressive than what vector monitors were capable of.

And by 1984 operators were well aware of how unreliable they were.

Major Havoc would have done much better as a raster title, however if it had been one then none of us would care about it all that much, it would have probably been lumped into the Atari "also ran" category instead of being considered a grail.
 
Vectors were done by 83 as well, you could probably argue that they were financially done by 81'. Most late vector titles were flops.

In the early days vectors were the high tech. Just look at how much faster a game like Tempest plays compared to raster titles from 1980. Think about Battlezone as well, 1980 and 1st person 3D perspective, with a large environment that extends beyond one screen.

Processors got faster, memory got cheaper and larger, video game engineers got better, and games started to play faster on raster monitors, rendering most advantages of vector monitors obsolete. Quantum could even draw solid objects, and still no one cared.
 
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