The Vectrex, in contrast to other video game systems at the time, did not need to be hooked up to a television set; it had an integrated (vertically oriented) monochrome CRT monitor.

The console was conceived by John Ross, of Smith Engineering, in late 1980 as a handheld called the "Mini Arcade".

Despite its commercial failure, the Vectrex was praised for its software library, unique graphical capabilities, and built-in monitor.

[1] A color handheld version of the Vectrex was conceived in the late 1980s, but was shelved because of its manufacturing cost and the success of the Nintendo Game Boy.

A demonstration of a vector-drawing cathode-ray tube display was made by connecting the deflection yoke in a standard television to the channels of a stereo amplifier fed with music program material.

The demo led to a system originally conceived as a handheld called the Mini Arcade but, as Smith Engineering shopped the idea around to developers, it evolved into a tabletop with nine-inch screen.

After a brief hardware and software development period, the Vectrex was unveiled on 7 June 1982 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.

[2] Milton Bradley's greater resources allowed the Vectrex to be released in parts of Europe by mid-1983 and, through a co-branding agreement with Bandai, in Japan as well.

[2] However, the video game crash of 1983 turned Milton Bradley's support of the Vectrex into a costly mistake, even despite reducing its price by 25% and then later 50% in desperation to sell units.

In February 1984, after losing $31.6 million on the Vectrex, Milton Bradley announced the discontinuation of the console and cancelled development of new games.

to revive the Vectrex as a handheld, but the imminent arrival of Nintendo's Game Boy put an end to those plans.

Voltage ramps are produced that the monitor uses to steer the electron beam over the face of the phosphor screen of the cathode-ray tube.

A vector CRT display such as the one in the Vectrex does not require a special tube, and differs from standard raster-based television sets only in the control circuits.

Rather than use sawtooth waves to direct the internal electron beam in a raster pattern, computer-controlled integrators feed linear amplifiers to drive the deflection yoke.

This design is a great deal smaller than the electronics found in the free-standing, full-sized Asteroids arcade machine.

Spinning the disk at a high enough speed will fool the viewer's eyes/brain into thinking that the multiple images it is seeing are two different views of the same object due to the persistence of vision.

[citation needed] The same 3-D effect is in fact possible with raster or film-projection images, and the shutter glasses used in some 3-D theaters and virtual reality theme park rides work on the same principle.

In order to enhance the display visuals of the Vectrex, every commercially released game included its own unique translucent plastic screen overlay that accompanied the cartridge (a concept first seen with the Magnavox Odyssey, as well as some early arcade machines).

Each overlay also displayed the title and logo of each game, along with a colored border or design, to add cosmetic flair to the Vectrex (much like an arcade machine with its marquee or side art).

Some of the Vectrex's library consisted of ports of arcade hits, most of them brought to the console through a licensing deal with Cinematronics.

The magazine praised the screen, stating that "it almost has to be seen to be believed; imagine playing games at home (or in the office) using vector graphics with three-dimensional rotation and zoom", and noted that "It is unusual and refreshing to see a product appearing on the market with its software ready to run".

[6] Its emulation is also a compound of MESS[17][18][19][20][21] (included in MAME,[22] so RetroArch too via libretro[23]), DVE,[24] lr-vex,[25] Vecx, with a Wii version called VectrexWii.