Comments on: Showing off the Vectrex

By: Peter Adams

Peter Adams — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:20:45 +0000

Triumph of the Nerds never came out on DVD as far as I know, but it can be found on YouTube at http://tinyurl.com/37xnc2

It’s over ten years old now and rather date but still interesting. Bob Cringley followed it up with Nerds 2.0: Rise of the Internet (or something), which is similar… sadly he focuses more on the business-side, especially in the latter show. Only about a third of it is really interesting to anyone who isn’t into the IT sector.

By: jmaxon

jmaxon — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:18:16 +0000

Nice review. I didn’t realize it was a vector system. That’s so cool! That would be like using Adobe Illustrator instead of PhotoShop for designing an entire book cover
I was born in 1977, but missed a lot of the gaming systems from the time due to growing up with little money. All the kids at school talked about them, but it wasn’t until I was 12 or so before I got my first Nintendo NES. My mother said if I came up with half the money ($50) then she would come up with the other half. Little did I know at the time that she only said it to keep me from asking her about it. Well, to her surprise, I dedicated the next year of my life finding small jobs and mowing lawns until I raise enough money.

Later, I came across some of the older systems in garage sales and have picked them up. But I still have that NES from way back when.

By: Darryl Sloan

Darryl Sloan — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:07:46 +0000

Yeah, Galaxian was great. It’s one of the few games I have really solid memories of, right down to the sound effects - even the little tune that plays at the start of each wave. (Although, to be fair, I’ve revisited it on MAME at some point since childhood, so I’m kind of cheating.)

By: ali

ali — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:05:01 +0000

That brings back fond memories of Galaxian, whoop, whoop, best game ever

By: Darryl Sloan

Darryl Sloan — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:46:05 +0000

Never heard of Triumph of the Nerds, but it sounds like the sort of show I would have loved. These days I enjoy reading http://www.retrothing.com

I don’t see myself getting into retro in a big way. My retro interests are few and specific. I do enjoy browsing car-boot sales, keeping an eye out for old videogame systems and the like. Last year I found one of those old Granstand handheld games: Tron, no less. I bought it for 50p, got it cleaned up, and sold it on eBay for £20!

However, I’ve got no intention of selling the Vectrex. Got other plans for it. More on that later (and possibly another vid).

By: PRAEst76

PRAEst76 — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:26:59 +0000

I love posts like this. I’ve always had an interest in computer technology history (Did you ever catch Bob Cringley’s series Triumph of the Nerds when it was on channel 4 in the mid 90’s?), especially when it comes to computer games and the like.

Maybe you could make this the start of a series and invest in more retro equipment? Got to get more ads or paypal donation boxes your site to help pay for it though, otherwise you’d end up in bankruptcy pretty quickly…