23rd August 2025 GamesCom – Vectrex “mini”

I love the mini Vectrex already.

It is irrational.
I have always been a Vectrex fan – I have seven “real” Vectrex here. With me. Now. In this tiny room of about 16 square meters.
(Ok – I also have about 30 Raspberries, 3 PCs, 7 monitors, a Virtual Boy, a VCS 2600, hundreds of books and cables and other electronic stuff… and … and … and…)

It still is irrational.
The “mini” has no vector monitor. It is an unfinished prototype. It has “rough” edges since it is (still) 3D printed.
Even the aspect ratio of the screen (and the overlays) is wrong.

As of now it is more a vision of what it can be.
The emulation is – as usual – based on vecx, and my trained eyes immediately spotted the treacherous glitches it provides (pretty much corrected here: malbanGit/libretro-vecx).

David – the driving force behind the mini – seems to be a Vectrex enthusiast.
“We” – that is: many people within the Vectrex Fans Unite Facebook group – pretty much did not know of/about him.
And as “we” have been burned before, David was met with quite a lot of suspicion and distrust – or at least that was my impression.
Immediately after him presenting his first vision of a Vectrex mini, calls came out as:
“Why do a mini!”
“He only wants to make money.”
“It can never be as good as the real thing.”
“Why does it not have a CRT?”
“Why not in the original size?”
“Has he got the rights?”
“Did he ask Mr Smith?”
_{(Don’t you love it? “Talking” on the internet – and ALL people are just tumbling over to be supportive and positive?)}

Today I met David. We talked, I asked questions, he answered. He showed me the prototypes, spoke of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign (probably starting end of September), his vision, and his plans.

Does he want to make money? Certainly – doing this is part of his livelihood. A project like this is not for free. I am totally fine with that.
He already invested money too.

Will he get rich?
Most probably not. Even commercial Vectrex projects nowadays are done with passion, not with reasons to get into big money.

Why I already love the thing.

• It is damn cute
• It is Vectrexish
• It is part of “keeping the Vectrex alive”
• Within its respective boundaries it is authentic
• I love that the SD-card slot is placed at the original cartridge port position
• I love that you can plug in original joysticks
• I love the Bluetooth/serial interface – with which you can also use the controllers (or any controller for that matter) with the original Vectrex (wireless)
• I love that the position of the HDMI will be placed on the back where the original brightness controls were
• I love that you will be able to reset, and volume control will work as on the vectrex
  (well – that is the plan, the prototypes were as yet build without those features)
• I love that you can run the emulation in black and white and use tiny overlays, instead of fixed colored emulation featuring a set of PNGs.
• I love that you can put new games on the SD card – and they will be added to the menu and be playable

I hope his Kickstarter campaign will succeed. I will certainly be a baker.

But – that is just me, my opinion.
In truth it is a gadget for a fan. A gadget for me!
It will not bring back the Vectrex glory days. It will not have true VECTORS, heck it will probably not even be able to run all games properly.

The emulation will be based on vecx and probably be running on an ESP32.
I might not be the “best” guy for Vectrex and emulation questions – but I consider myself amongst the best. I offered my help: testing and providing support with the emulation. I hope David takes me up on my offer – even if only to port my retrolib core. That alone would be a tremendous step forward.

Link to David’s the currently very active homepage: News – Vectrex

PS
There might be even more!
David showed me also some images of a book he was writing. “Data” collected during the last two years of this Vectrex project.

PPS
Ooops. Saturday – didn’t calculate in traffic jams!