Well, here it is, original Vectrex homebrewer John Dondzila’s third unlimited release. Dondzila’s products really grew in leaps and bounds, as his first homebrew outing of Vector Vaders ran a bit slow until several invaders were killed. Then his next cartridge, Patriots, was heralded by some as the best Vectrex game yet at the time (plus it had a secret bonus game as well, to boot). Then All Good Things was not only the first 16K Vectrex cartridge ever, but it also has a whopping four regular AND one bonus game as well!

 

And speaking of which, lets dive into those games now, shall we?

 

ROCKAROIDS here in this Asteroids clone you must either you shoot rocks (which cause them to split into two more--twice!), dodge them or die. Flying saucers also appear to shoot at you, and they change directions pretty quickly, making them hard to hit at times. At first the game seems a bit hard, but after a few games you’ll realize how easy it is, which will result in some very long games. They can keep going and going...

 

MORE INVADERS! a bit slow-paced for a while, but I like this one a lot better. Of course, there’s a lot of invaders that travel across the screen, come closer, drop a bunch of bombs (sometimes to the point of my wanting to yell STOP SHOOTING! at the screen, but hey, this game can’t be *too* easy now, can it?), there’s the bonus U. F. O. to shoot, etc., yadda, etc. However, there’s a few new wrinkles here, one of which is the saucer shoots back. There’s also hidden bonuses that you can obtain from level to level (which helps, since it’s a long way to hitting 5,000 before you’ll earn an extra laser base), the invaders start splitting into smaller ones from the second level on, and a little stick figure will go flying out of your laser base when it gets hit! Cute.

 

SPIKE’S WATER BALLOONS the Vectrex mascot Spike is back in this Kaboom! clone. Dunno why his enemy Spud has gone soft and has resorted to throwing treacherous water balloons at our hero (oh no), but you must pop them with those spikes on your head nonetheless. Even though there’s the new move added of being able to kick a balloon back up if you miss it (a la the old arcade game Kickman), most of the time if you miss a balloon it’s too late anyway. Spike’s head is pretty small, making it difficult to pop the balloons in the first place, and along with a long pause in between screens...well, lets just say you’re pretty much better off playing the original game instead. Next...

 

VECTRIS a Tetris clone, obviously. Blocky objects fall from the top of the screen, you must make them fit together and not stack up to the top; causing a row (or more) to completely line up will cause that row to disappear. One thing I can’t understand is why I like this game, since, with most Tetris-like games, I only like the arcade original, complete with endings of levels along with a bonus awarded; just having one long game that just gets faster annoys me, yet I still like this one, for some reason. Another thing I can’t understand is the harsh reviews from Digital Press and the Video Game Critic, complaining of the flicker. Uh, if you just throw a colorful overlay on top of it (like Scramble), this eliminates the problem, guys...no need to quit after playing only one or two games (which both reviews said they did), this is still very addicting (somehow!)!

 

23 MATCHES (hidden bonus game) not much here, just the only TRS-80 clone game that I know of to hit the Vectrex. You start with 23 matches and you must figure out what combination of matches to take away during a turn to win against the computer. Good luck.

 

The graphics range from not much to write about (the aliens in More Invaders! are just the letter V! Gasp!) to cool, and I didn’t find the sounds to be really terribly exciting either (Vectris). There are also some bugs in the games as well that are annoying (one makes the invaders drop down a few levels at one time, most of the time the 200-400 bonus points in Vectris won’t work), and if you’re new to homebrews, this should be one of the first ones to order from Dondzila. The reason? Because two of the games on here (Invaders and Rockaroids) run a lot faster on the later release of Vecmania (although the gameplay of Invaders on this cartridge and the one on Vecmania are slightly different anyway, but I’m just pointing it out); getting Vecmania first and then this later (like I did) is kind of like going from a monster truck down to a Ford Escort: both will get you where you need to go, but you’re going to have an adjustment period between the two.

 

Still another usual mandatory purchase from Dondzila though.

 

Score 7/10

 

Review written by Darryl