Vectorblade
The first Retro spotlight will be about the Vectorblade project from Malban. Vectorblade is a game that was released 2 months ago for the Vectrex, a game console that was released in 1982. Because the Vectrex is old, there are a lot of limitations when making a game for it. Because of this, Vectorblade is an admirable achievement in which a lot of effort has put into it. The game is inspired by Warblade for the Amiga computer and is a bottom top shooter game.
The game
When you start the game, you arrive at an animated menu with the following options: achievements, start game, settings and high scores. Every time the game starts, you start at level 1 and all enemies must be defeated in order to go to the next level. Here you fly in your spaceship through the universe with the aim of defeating the final boss at level 99. Along the way, you catch a lot of falling objects that make your weapons and attributes either better or worse. So you also have to pay attention to what you encounter, an upgrade or a downgrade. But you can also buy them at the shop, which you will encounter a few times during your trip. When you have run out of lives, you can submit your score on the leaderboard and you will return to the main menu.
I have already played the game a few times and I’m getting further into the levels, it’s hard to get far because the game can be quite difficult. The game gives more than enough entertainment, the random events such as minestrom and warp failure create a wide-ranging gameplay. On Malban’s blog, he describes the techniques and processes behind this game. There you can find a lot of technical information, but also the considerations that had to be made due to the limitations of the system. A limited number of boxes will be sent out and after the release is complete the code will be available for the public to play on their computer.
Read more about this game here:
Vectorblade: http://vide.malban.de/