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| 99. Mine Storm (1982, Vectrex) by Ice Cream Jonsey 06/17/2026, 10:26am PDT | ||||
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| 99. Mine Storm
Creator: John Hall, for General Consumer Electronics Genre: "Arcade", / Space Shooter Year: 1982 Platforms: Vectrex Mobygames link Available through: Emulators such as VecX and MiSTER FPGA Inspired by Asteroids, this is the "pack in" game for Vectrex, only there was no cartridge you needed. All Vectrexes have this if you start a Vectrex with no cartridge. Like Asteroids, the motion is Newtonian when it shouldn't be. In space, nothing should slow you down, but you do slow down in this (ostensibly due to the small screen) and the rate that you slow is much, much quicker than what you may be used to in Asteroids. So the feel is different, but again, with the smaller screen it works. Your thrusting is quick and precise, with directed moves. Giggity. But let's take a step back. The Vectrex was a home video game console with vector graphics. It had a 9" screen. There is a certain pleasure to putting one of these on a desk and firing it up and playing a game on it, and Mine Storm popping off before you even have a cartridge is pretty cool. There was a discussion about a console's first game being its best game, and I think that for the pre-homebrew wave, Mine Storm is the best Vectrex game. The idea behind Mine Storm is that some ships are at first going to stay still as you blast them, then we progress through more levels where shooting them has them kamikaze toward you. This was 1982, so the concept of losing a conflict because you sent trained pilots straight toward the enemy in an attempt to kill them was a successful, confident, battle-tested tactic. I think medium, or platform is important. Super Mario Bros. was available as a NES cartridge for your home and on a Play Choice 10 machine in an arcade, where you paid for time. The arcade version has you standing up, playing with a joystick under an artificial time/quarter constraint. The home version just went for $3 million for a copy. These things matter; Mine Storm may not look like much on a YouTube video or while emulated, but the glow of the vectors and pleasure of precision shooting still holds up. 
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