Ah! $40 would have been a wonderful deal, sorry to hear this!
I purchased two consoles, advertised as broken on ebay: The first, I won for $20, coming in with just the unit and no controllers or games. While I was cleaning it, I flipped it on its side to get some dirt off, then when finished I plugged it back in and it worked just as normal! I think there is a loose solder connection between the two boards, but so far I haven't had any problems with it!
Searching hard for a controller, I saw prices go from $50 to $100 for a used one. I finally bit the bullet and purchased another broken Vectrex unit with controller for $75. That one has proved to be a problem to fix and I will need to discharge the CRT which I am afraid to do.
I picked up a VecMulti from the Atariage forums for $70usd, and it was worth every penny! Highly highly recommended! Works perfectly and I can play every game I throw at it. I just wish developers would release roms of all those amazing homebrew games.
I'm in the process of printing the manuals and am searching for a good local printing service to get the overlays printed as I feel like I am missing out on some of the experience.
Those sharp vector lines though, so amazing!
If there were two consoles I could keep out of my entire collection, it would be without a doubt the Vectrex and the Virtual Boy, my favorite underdogs of gaming history.
wazzal wrote: Those sharp vector lines though, so amazing!
If there were two consoles I could keep out of my entire collection, it would be without a doubt the Vectrex and the Virtual Boy, my favorite underdogs of gaming history.
Totally agree, there is nothing else that looks like vectrex. If you do find a good source for overlays I could be interested in a set, I recently got mine and it came with a multi cart so like you just experiencing the white vectors, overlays will enhance the vectrex experience.