Vectrex Donkey Kong... Vector Kong with auto changing color overlays.

[@allenhuffman]

Wow. I love being out of the loop because it makes learning about something like this even more “magical.” Digital color overlay and Donkey Kong for the Vectrex! Just wild.

[@Mrshoujo]

JVC made a TV where the CRT was black & white and made a synchronized LCD color filter, so doing this with the Vectrex makes sense.

[@mcwooley]

Did you learn about that from Technology Connections (KZbin channel)? Monday, December 19, 2022 CE, 23:19 EST

[@AndrewAHayes]

What an excellent conversion, had this been available around the Vectrex days it would have been a different story for the console and maybe the colour version would have seen the light of day.

[@swifty1969]

Mario looks more like a fireman than a plumber. This is truly amazing, if this was released back in the day, Vectrex would have lasted much longer.

[@FunnyTimersChannel]

Mario was a carpenter in Donkey Kong

[@paulphillips3783]

That there is all kinds of both cutting edge and nostalgic all at the same time! Thanks so much for posting the video. I feel somewhat honoured to have witnessed the birth and followed the lives of many vintage consoles. I look forward to your Doom port to the Vectrex! :D

[@OriginalGrasshopper]

Wow! This looks *INCREDIBLE* !! 🤯 So cool to see D.K. with vector graphics.

[@Jeansowaty]

WOW that port looks so impressive!

[@stevenspx6226]

Played a neighbors vectrex in the mid 1980s loved asteroids this looks awesome

[@bjy128]

Thanks. Yeah the built in game was called MineStorm, basically Asteroids but some would say better. You now can play the real Asteroids on Vectrex too.

[@stevenspx6226]

@@bjy128 yeah a remember now minestorm 👌

[@mowingcowboy]

Coding magic. Well done. I love the concept of auto changing overlay.Literally a game changer for the vectrex community .Some one please make this available and take my $$$ .

[@jonday4396]

Fantastic! What a great use of your dynamic lcd overlay! Great video as always. :)

[@jessragan6714]

How the hell did you do this?! I mean, like all of this... the accurate DK port, the dynamic color overlay. It's just nuts.

[@bjy128]

Thanks Jess, I can't take the credit for the DK port, Thomas Sontowski the maker of the VecFever did that. I did make the color overly it uses a LCD panel wit the backlight removed, I can monitor the serial bus to find out which screen DK is on and display the proper colors. Still a work in progress!

[@sideburn]

Wow nice job!

[@black-galaxy]

Awesome.

[@joebill3400]

Impressive.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

@@bjy128IIRC, GCE was planning on doing a color Vectrex down the road but they went out of business before that could happen.

[@Officialbrownrobinbird]

I like how the audio sounds similar to the atari 400/5200/800/800XL Version

[@BudSchnelker]

The collision detection looks spot on. Great job.

[@coreymacgregor176]

That machines graphics are so unique. Very cool

[@JomasterTheSecond]

Impressive. Most impressive! My hat goes off to the guy who made this.

[@sunkilla537]

I loved my vectrex when I was a kid... my 1st system..

[@BradleyBishop]

Everything about that is awesome.

[@Zaron3d]

Wow! Amazing work! Hats off to you for sure.

[@geoffgunn9673]

makes me wish my shed didn't burn down with all my stuff in it, would have loved one of these for a vectrex

[@DamienCollettiGamer]

Pretty cool to play Donkey Kong on Vectrex!

[@MaxOakland]

Very cool. I was thinking about why the floors don't have vertical lines and I'm guessing it's too many lines for the system to draw per frame. That makes me wonder about line management in the Vectrex. What it's like, how devs handle it... stuff like that. Could be a cool video

[@thereagauze]

I think mostly by coding a game then seeing how it runs. The nitty gritty is at 50 fps you have 30000 CPU cycles to do EVERYTHING, and there are techniques to do math, collision detection whatever while the light gun is moving or drawing to speed things up (cram more work in the same amount of time). the built in drawing routines are generalized and somewhat slow you can write your own optimized drawing routines and since roms can be 32k or 64k now on an unmodified cart (instead of 4k) you can inline some code for faster execution since you aren't doing branching and returns to subroutines which waste quite a few cycles for every call and return (around 13 cycles I think? depending on addressing more) .

[@MaxOakland]

@@thereagauze it’s not just the cpu cycles I’m thinking of. You’d also have to make sure the beam can draw everything. I’m wondering where it taps out

[@thereagauze]

@@MaxOakland true there's a thread about this on the "vector gaming proboard" with some tests, Google the above if you are interested.

[@keddragonwolf]

This is just amazing!

[@NickMurray]

Excellent

[@amn2014]

A console that doesn’t even have pixels made a better version donkey Kong than the NES version. Nintendo you NEED to make something like this😊

[@HeitorMD]

I Thought of porting the fricking VIC-20 version to this..................... at school

[@LaurenGlenn]

Really good for the time.... no home console version of the game at the time had the 50m board on it, except for Colecovision, maybe?

[@GregsGameRoom]

Wow, this is awesome!

[@relo999]

Just, wow.

[@bryede]

I'm not impressed by the latest whatever gadgets anymore, I'd rather see someone squeeze more life out of something vintage. This is awesome.

[@zauza.]

Absolute amazing ! Great job !

[@sambo179]

I wish I still had my Vectrex. 😭

[@faberfox]

This is amazing, congrats!

[@Ougerosity598]

If you could play Donkey Kong in Hotline Miami, it would look like this.

[@Renville80]

Impressed.

[@JK-mo2ov]

Incredible

[@monkeymanbob]

The Vectrex suffered from the lack of killer apps back in the day. This could have been a game changer. Does it have all the levels?

[@bjy128]

Yes it has all the levels. The Vectrex can now also play The Vector Arcade version or Star Wars, Battle Zone, Tempest, etc with the use of special carts.

[@SilverXTikal]

One question. Is it a pixelated lcd? Or panels of single colors? Would kind of undo the whole point of the Vectrex to add a layer of pixels over it lol

[@bjy128]

@@SilverXTikal the LCD panel does have pixels, but if you look closely at any color vector CRT monitor. (Think Star Wars or Tempest) you’ll see a color grid up close. With this technique sitting at a normal distance you can not see any pixels or distortion or aliasing. If you stick your eye very close, yes you can see the pixel grid. I wouldn’t have taken this project to completion if this was an issue. It’s not for me. Again the best I can say is this is better than a color Vector XY monitor in my opinion. And still retains all the nice ‘feeling’ of the sharp clear bright monochromatic vector CRT.

[@dumpnchase]

This is so cool!!

[@properjob2311]

how do you control the display of the overlay image on the LCD? Are you using a Raspberry Pi or something like that?

[@bjy128]

It depends, A VecFever can output on the serial bus the game and sometimes the level that is playing, so I can have a smallRpi read he bus and display and overlay. I can also have a computer run VecMAME and feed the vectrex and HDMI to the overlay.

[@properjob2311]

@@bjy128 where did you get the LCD panel? from old laptop?

[@bjy128]

@@properjob2311 www.waveshare.com

[@RUOK2000]

Oh wow amazing

[@MSBomberman94]

Makes sense … where can i order this magic overlay? 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@TeleKamptiA]

It’s a Vectrex console

[@robertlynn9353]

@@TeleKamptiA I believe he's asking about the overlay, not the system itself. Do you know where to get the "magic" overlay for the Vectrex?

[@bjy128]

I only made one digital overlay, sorry not for sale.

[@worldofretrogameplay6963]

Where can we get this for Vectrex???

[@bjy128]

You will need a VecFever Cart to play this at the moment. The VecFever carts are very hard to get. www.vecfever.com

[@properjob2311]

amazing

[@MagnusWedmark]

Mindblowing, great work! Homebrew game of high-quality check! Vecfever Cart check! And that overlay and everything working together! Is there a LCD that fits Vectrex screen perfect? I guess you could do similar thing using a Pitrex?

[@BeanpotPubParlour]

Damn,. that is awesome. How does that work? I have a Vectrex does this work on original hardware, how???

[@bjy128]

You would need A VecFever for your Vectrex to play Vector Kong. And I made the custom digital color overlay. Glad you like it. You can however now play Asteroids on the normal Vectrex Hardware, You can download the .bin file for free and run it on most flash carts for a Vectrex.

[@bjy128]

www.vecfever.com/2022/11/05/rns-public-release-fw-v2-49-and-general-project-info/

[@BeanpotPubParlour]

@@bjy128 Obviously I need to get more into my Vectrex. What is a Vec-fever? Is it like an Everdrive for Vectrex?

[@bjy128]

@@BeanpotPubParlour The Vecfever is a very special cart that allows you to run all regular vectrex games, but also most of the arcade Vector game...and more. They are very hard to get. The PiTrex is easier to get and does much of the same.

[@Tchiko.]

Impressive, awesome!

[@gordonhosie607]

I don't understand the different changing colours in the screen. That's impossible

[@bjy128]

Hi, I modified a Vectrex by placing a transparent LCD panel in front of the monochrome CRT. The vectors from the CRT are colorized by the LCD. The Vector Kong game is also outputting the level name via a serial port on the cart, which in turn is read by the LCD electronics to display the correct color screen overlay. Hope that helps. Look at my channel for other videos that show this in more detail.

[@sideburn]

What this is awesome 👏 any more info on your dynamic overlay? I just randomly stumbled on this vid.

[@bjy128]

Hi Sideburn, my channel has a few videos showing the overlay in use. But basically I took a LCD panel, removed all the backlight, polarizer control board,etc. then placed that right in front of the Vectrex vector CRT. The vectors will be colorized by the LCD. Using the VecFever or a PiTrex I can monitor the serial bus and know which game is playing or which level then update the panel as needed. There are also way to update color in realtime. (Vectrex Flocking part 2 shows this)

[@sideburn]

@@bjy128 interesting. Do you know if the vecfever will be available again at some point? Was he still making a v2?

[@bjy128]

I really do not know. I know part of the problem is the chip shortage. The PiTrex is not a bad option and is open source.

[@sideburn]

@@bjy128 haven’t heard of it. So the pitrex let’s you play arcade roms on a vectrex ?

[@bjy128]

@@sideburn Yes www.ombertech.com/pitrex.php

[@vectrexer]

YUM! Maybe the PiTrex should incorporate the same communication protocol use by VecFever to notify about the game being played? And VEXTREME. And others.

[@bjy128]

I agree, I think ti would be easy to someone to add to PiTrex. Unfortunately I don't know enough about bare metal.

[@geekwithsocialskills]

Agreed, we need a PiTrex friendly version for those of us without a VecFever.

[@markrotondella4689]

jeepers this is amazing

[@wingnut-jt5yz]

Is there a rom available?

[@Simptendo]

This sounds identical to the Atari 8 bit pokey

[@AdrianPenalo]

Nice!!

[@magnusdiridian]

still waiting on dragon's lair!!

[@DiegoSanchez-pl9eh]

awesome!

[@duckywenselcomedy]

Wow!

[@AgentM79]

Sorcery.

[@unknown_guy5366]

With atari 800 music.

[@my-videoplay]

Come si può ottenere il file BIN?

[@bjy128]

It's not out yet. Also you need a VecFever.

[@my-videoplay]

​@@bjy128I don't own the Vectrex device, I use an emulator if anything ParaJVE

[@bjy128]

@@my-videoplay Ok, this will not work on an emulator. As far as I know.

[@BRANSKI-1911]

😲

[@Linty-hk8st]

It sounds so… depressed

[@eternalhalloween1]

What? One life is all you get?

[@elamriti]

where can we buy the rom ?

[@bjy128]

It's not released yet. And it will require a VecFever, at least at first.