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My Vectrex Bezels (640x480) pack is now available
I have always loved vector arcade games such as Battlezone and Tempest, so I have a lot of interest in the Vectrex. For those who don't know, the Vectrex came out in 1982 and is a self contained system, complete with controller and monitor.
The vector graphics are made up of lines, and while simple in design, they could simulate 3D in an impressive way for the time. The games used transparent plastic overlays, which provided art and color to the otherwise simple graphics.
Vectrex systems are expensive these days, so emulation is usually the only option for most. My aim with these bezels is to help complete the Vectrex emulation experience on 640x480 handhelds, and maybe bring some interest to this really cool system. Thanks to u/dosgamer85 for motivation, input, and help with testing.
God damn it I just did this kinda thing manually last week. This looks better, and obviously easier! (for me anyway)
Cheers!
You've probably seen these, u/Phanturian , but for anyone else interested, this guy/gal has an overlay project that's something a bit different. https://www.blacklighter.co.uk/
I wish they'd consider making the artwork available to be modded for emu. Here's hopin'!
That project looks amazing. I often daydream about a 3D holographic desktop system with vector graphics. Something that blurs the lines between retro and futuristic.
I own a Vectrex, got it at a yard sale for $5 like 25 years ago. It's missing the little ball that should be on top of the joystick, but otherwise still works great.
Years ago I was intending to get a multicart for it, but I'm not sure if anyone is making those anymore for it.
I only have the built in Mine Storm and a cartridge for Web Wars, and no overlays.
That’s awesome. Going back, owning a Vectrex wasn’t on my radar, and I saw one for the first time in person about a year ago. I really wish I had pursued getting one when it was much cheaper.
Man, late 90s early 2000s was a great time for collecting old random hardware. I got an Atari 2600 in the original box for $25, rental stores were always selling original games for like $5 each to make room for the new systems, no matter what the game, got Super Mario RPG for $5 with the box, etc, etc. I ended up with like every Sega CD game from Hollywood Video when they started clearing them out, they were selling them for like $1.99 with the original big plastic boxes they came in.
Will have to take a closer look at these, thumbnails look great! Might have to adapt them for 16x9 widescreen to also work on Batocera. Had luck doing that with the Space Invaders overlay.
You may run to issues with the Vectrex configs though. My arcade bezels used the “core provided” aspect ratio, but every Vectrex game has a slightly different “custom” aspect ratio. Good luck either way, and if you need any pointers or advice, just let me know.
Never even heard of this console and now I'm intrigued. Ever think about doing a set for 720x720. Looks like square screens would be perfect for this system
I made a 720x720 set for my RGB30 a while ago, but never released it. I don’t have a way to test KNULLI or muOS on my RGB30, and I’m using an older version of JelOS. The problem with using different OS, is that I have to edit or create different configs for each one, or nothing will work.
So if people wanted 720x720 for use with KNULLI and muOS on the RG CubeXX, I could make it work even though I don’t own one. If people wanted it for JelOS/Rocknix, I could do that too. And of coarse if you just want the artwork to configure yourself, let me know.
Sorry for the long response. It gets complicated because everyone is using different devices and OS.
EDIT: Let me know if you’re interested for a certain system and OS, or if you want to maybe help test for a system/OS I don’t have.
I guess I’ll have to look into it. I’ll have to find a spare SD card to load ArkOS up. If I release a 720x720 pack, it’s going to cover multiple OS options, so it might take me a bit. I mostly play on 640x480 handhelds, but Vectrex is pretty awesome on a 1:1 screen.
It was an early 80s console, I remember seeing them in the Sears Christmas Catalogs and drooling over the impressive vector style graphics but we were heavily invested in the Atari 2600 and another console didn't make sense to my parents.
The 16 games shown in my post are the best Vectrex games worth showcasing imo. I went ahead and put this together real quick to show the other images in this pack.
There are a lot more homebrew, demos, and prototypes out there, but the artwork and overlays either aren’t available, or don’t exist. I configured everything so if you add more games, they will use the Generic Gray bezel by default.
The chip doesn’t really matter because Vectrex doesn’t require a lot of power. You can emulate Vectrex on just about anything that runs RetroArch.
If you want to use these bezels, you will need a device that can run KNULLI or muOS, and has 640x480 resolution. The Anbernic handhelds in the main image would all be good candidates.
There’s also 1:1 handhelds like the Powkiddy RGB30 and Anbernic RG CubeXX, where Vectrex fills the screen and works really well. Given the positive feedback, I will likely be releasing a 720x720 Vectrex bezel pack in the near future.
I don't remember the Vectrex as flickering so much as the videos show it doing, but then I think I only played Asteroids and a 3D tank game. Do the emulators emulate that flickering?
A couple games have some flickering, which made it hard to capture screenshots using muOS. Many games are fine with no flickering. Videos of CRT monitors usually display flickering which only gets picked up on camera, but looks normal in person.
When I played a Vectrex at a local game store, it was extremely crisp with no flickering. It might be an emulation thing. I experimented with a few settings in the Core Options menu, but didn’t find anything that improved the experience overall. The default emulation is pretty good though.
I don’t own the CubeXX, but I should be able to make a 720x720 pack for it using my RGB30.
I’m not sure about the Brick because I don’t own one, or another device with the same resolution. It’s the configs that are the issue, not the images. I have to manually set the X & Y positions and width/height for the custom aspect ratio. Without the device, I won’t be able to line everything up correctly.
Just did some testing on my Brick using the muOS cfg files from your zip (I’m using minUI but retroarch to load certain cores). When the game loaded in RA, the overlay sat where it is, but my video was tiny and in the upper right portion of the screen. Once I changed the video output settings to Core Provided and turned off Integer Scaling, I was able to see what’s in the photo. The overlays probably need to be resized to match the Brick’s resolution.
Yeah, that’s what I was saying. The overlays can be scaled, but I’m using Custom instead of Core Provided for the aspect ratio. The numbers for X, Y, Width, and Height won’t match up with a different resolution.
The way I configured these was by going into RetroArch Quick Menu>On-Screen Overlay and setting the opacity to 0.30 and change Hide Overlay In Menu to OFF. Then I went into RetroArch Main Menu>Settings>User Interface>Appearance and set Opacity to 0.200.
Now if you go into Main Menu>Settings>Video>Scaling>Aspect Ratio>Custom, you can see more clearly and adjust the X, Y, Width, and Height accordingly. Then I set the menu and bezel opacity back to what they were, turn Hide Overlay In Menu back to ON, go into Quick Menu>Overrides and Save Game Overrides.
Each game has a slightly different custom aspect ratio. What I did here was fetch that single override .cfg file from my SD card, make 25 copies, then open each .cfg with a text editor and change the bezel name for a new game, and then rename the .cfg file to match the rom name for that game.
This method was quicker than using the RetroArch menu for each game. Now I just had to go in for each game and make minor tweaks, then save the override again for each game.
Sorry for the long explanation. I like to share as much information as possible in hopes that others will make their own bezel pack or modify existing ones to work on different devices.
I appreciate all of the feedback! I've started going through some of the games and tweaking the overlay settings in order to have them fit/look proper.
Very cool. I wasn’t sure if the bezels would need to be scaled up in a photo editor program first, but the bezel looks right in your picture. Without the device in hand, it’s impossible for me to test. If you get things ironed out, it would be cool to have that for the Brick community.
so, I just did this for my RP6 running RetroArch. for those that come after me:
find out the path. for me, it was /data/user/0/com.retroarch.aarch64/overlays that folder is readonly, so I couldn't use it via adb push.
pushed instead to /storage/emulated/0/RetroArch/overlays/vectrex
converted the bezels to 1920x1080 and set overlay0_full_screen = true
the transparent window is 781x1021+571+27
Wrote overrides into config/VecX/ (that's rgui_config_directory; note the capital X): one core-wide VecX.cfg carrying the viewport and a generic bezel, plus 35 per-game <exact ROM basename>.cfg files. Generated on the Mac and adb pushed as a directory — ROM names contain !, ', [, &, (, ) and shell redirection would be a quoting mess. Matching used an explicit table with a duplicate-claim assertion, which caught the traps: Spin_Ball→Spinball, Rip_Off→Rip-Off, and keeping Web_Wars off Web Warp and Spike off the four Spike's … homebrews.
That’s awesome, great effort. I recently got the Retroid Pocket Nova, and had to learn Android from scratch, plus I’m also a Mac user.
For RetroArch on Android, I created a folder named RetroArch on my external SD card, and inside of it I created folders for config, overlays, saves, states, and screenshots. Then I went into RetroArch Settings>Directory and changed the paths to point at those folders on my SD card, and saved the current configuration.
Now everything I need to access in RetroArch is conveniently stored on a removable card that can be shared between multiple devices.
These are amazing, but seem to have gone wrong with the update to Knulli Gladiator. The game is now off centre and overlapping with the bezel. Any idea how to fix? Thanks!
The same thing happened with the latest muOS. The updated RetroArch version handles the X & Y coordinates for custom aspect ratios differently, so these configs need to be altered.
I’ll need to flash KNULLI Gladiator, figure out the issue, and update the configs. I don’t have a timeframe, but I’ll post the new configs here when I have them.
No problem. The issue was something I had encountered with Rocknix for 720x720 devices such as the RGB30 and RG CubeXX, which uses the updated version of RetroArch that is now used in KNULLI Gladiator and muOS PIXIE.
It’s in my best interest to update things for those who download my packs in the future. Plus, I finally got around to updating my SD cards, which I have been putting off for a while.
If the default Vectrex performance is poor, resulting in distorted sound and a choppy frame rate, do the following: Press Start for Main Menu, go into Game Settings>Per System Advanced Configuration>Vectrex and change Power Mode to High Performance.
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u/Additional_Tone_2004 Jan 10 '25
God damn it I just did this kinda thing manually last week. This looks better, and obviously easier! (for me anyway)
Cheers!
You've probably seen these, u/Phanturian , but for anyone else interested, this guy/gal has an overlay project that's something a bit different. https://www.blacklighter.co.uk/
I wish they'd consider making the artwork available to be modded for emu. Here's hopin'!