Hi, my name is Jesus Torres AKA centaura.
I was born in the psychedelic year of 1972, being so very young during my first Pong days, but I played using an old AEG television with several clones and Pong variants (Zanussi Ping-O-Tronic, Overkal, Togisa Teletenis) even before learning to read (like babies do with smartphones now, for example).
Around the 80s I discovered the Asteroids arcade machine. I have to say... it was my big brother who played (and who owned the coins); meanwhile I had to learn to play "watching" him.
However, I was lucky because a good friend of my father brought many of the classic arcade machines for his poolroom biz. (He often opened the machines by giving me a pair of free rounds, so I grew up happy playing lots of the fascinating early 80 releases.)
That was my first contact with vector machines.
My uncle bought a Vectrex, and a few years afterwards, so did one of my friends. So I could play many classic Vectrex games. But I only had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum-like game machine at home. It was a good thing for learning BASIC, but nothing to do with the fascinating Vectrex vector graphic system.
Years after, I rescued that old Vec from my uncle. And...I still own it today :)
Very happy to see the Vectrex is alive, after all these long years!
This article was featured from March - April, 2018.