VectrexWii
| VectrexWii | |
| General | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Aruskano |
| Type | Console emulator |
| Version | 0.3 |
| Links | |
| Download | |
| Source | |
| Downloadable via the Open Shop Channel | |
| Peripherals | |
    | |
VectrexWii is a Wii port of Vecx, a Vectrex emulator written by Valavan Manohararajah.
ROMs
The original/official vectrex games were made public domain some time ago and there are some homebrew ones on the internet. The vectrex came with a built in Asteroids-like game called Minestorm. This game is compiled in the binary and can be played if no ROM is found.
ROMs must be placed within a folder named vec at the root of either SD or USB. The file extension must be .vec (case insensitive).
Overlays
The vectrex used screen overlays to simulate color and add some decorations. If you place a PNG image within the same folder of the loaded ROM and both of them are named exactly the same (excluding the file extension) that image is going to be used as the overlay for the corresponding ROM. The image dimensions must be 388x480 pixels and it must be in RGBA mode.
You can find a good (correct size and mode) collection here.
Settings
- Cartridge: Allows you to choose where do you want to load ROMs from. Devices (SD or USB) will only be shown if a ROM was found within them (at the location explained earlier at this page).
- Joystick: The controller that is listened to during the emulation. The controller that "turns the vectrex on" is automatically selected but this can be changed from the pause menu.
- Overlay: The opacity/alpha channel of the overlay can be modified so you can make it less noticeable if you want to.
- Custom color: Have the vectors/points drawn the color you want them to be. You can play around with the RGB components to get the color of your choice. If you turn this feature off the color computed by the emulator will be used.
- Glow: Gives an effect of glowing lines/dots. Play around with the factor to see the results. Remember the higher the factor is the slower the drawing gets.
- Persistence: Redraws old frames to give a persistence effect. You can choose how many frames are persistent (to use less resources if needed) and play around with the color (grayscale) and opacity (alpha component).
If you are getting low framerate consider disabling or modifying some of these features to get a faster rendering process.
Controls
|
 |
Action |
|---|---|---|
 /  |
 /  |
Move the cursor across the options |
 /  |
 /  |
Select a ROM in the current cartridge |
 |
 |
Return to loader |
| Any other | Any other | Trigger the selected option |
|
|
Action |
|---|---|---|
| / |
/ |
Move the cursor across the options |
| / |
/ |
Toggle the selected option |
|
|
Select the Resume game option |
 (hold) |
 (hold) |
Hide the menu to preview the changes |
| Any other | Any other | Go to the selected sub-menu |
In game
The vectrex controller had 4 buttons and a stick. On the wiimote (hold it horizontally) these are mapped to the PAD, A, B, 1 and 2 buttons. On the gamecube controller these are mapped to the PAD/control stick, A, B, X and Y buttons.
There's no way to configure input buttons right now and other controllers are not supported yet.
Video
It crashes because of a leak I already know of. See Next release for details.
Next release
- Fix known bugs on the emulator code which cause problems with Minestorm (freezes some seconds if you hit certain enemies before they start moving), Bedlam and Polar Rescue. Thanks to raz0red for pointing these out.
- Sound support.
- Buttong mapping, nunchuk and classic controller support.
- I'm leaking memory and it causes the emulator to crash when you load certain number of ROMs (depending of how many ROMs you have in the SD/USB, higher number of ROMs means lower number of loaded ROMs before crashing). A quick, patched version will be released asap.