Vectorzoa gains a new team member!

On Sunday 27th August 2006 at 9:15pm our beautiful baby Eleanor Rose entered the world. This photo was taken within 10 minutes of her birth. Mother and baby are both well and have safely returned home.
[With such tiny hands PCB soldering should be a breeze for her, and another beta tester is always welcome!]

Joust Evolution Screenshots

Having produced a test overlay Vectorzoa can now reveal screen shots from Vectrex Joust Evolution. By visiting the main site vectorzoa.com check out the raster platforms and flickering flames and vector mounts, eggs and remaining details. Remember this game is Joust Evolution, at this point only the Joust Classic features are shown.

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Spike's Circus 2 - In Development!

Following the excellent reception of Spike's Circus (Classic Edition still available) and the clear demand for skill based games that are really fun to play Vectorzoa is proud to announce the title and concept of the sequel:

Spike's Circus 2 : Spud Bounces Back

This game will feature similar concepts, but this time starring Spud (as the anti-hero!) The quintessential element of the game will be Spud riding a Pogo Stick! The pogo stick adds new complexities of control and challenges including bounce synchronisation and leaping over objects! SC2 is currently in design but further details and screenshots will be published soon.

Spike's Circus Completion Competition #2

To give international buyers an opportunity to compete for a free copy of Joust Evolution. Vectorzoa has offered Joust Evolution #04 as a prize in a second competition. All Spike's Circus Limited Edition owners were invited to submit the unlock codes of the final level before 9pm on Friday 18th August 2006. There were two entrants:

• Robert Stickles
• Pepijn Bakker

According to contest rules the winner of JE#04 was to be decided by random selection.

After validating submissions, a suitable random probability visual indicator endorsed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was selected from a convienient mobile personal appareil pouch. The candidates were designated a respective facet, the instrument was then launched along a freefall parabola orthoganol to the natural plane. Following the subsequent collision with the plane and the eventual assertion of a stable equilibrium the victor was found to be the latter of the aformentioned identities.

Or to put it another way..

Pepijn won the coin toss.

Congratulations, you win the forthcoming Joust Evolution LE #04

Spike's Circus Completion Competition #1

The first person in the world to complete Spike's Circus is confirmed to be: Mike Cottrell! Mike (Tyke) wins #03 of the forthcoming Joust Evolution!

22222

Spike's Circus is game number 2 from Vectorzoa stable. (if you're a programmer that is, since programmers always count from 0! (See the Limited Edition Serial numbers for proof.) Logo was game 0, Star Sling was 1. As Vectrex collectors may be aware Star Sling was especially written to fit within the size of ROM that programmers had to use back in 1982. This size used was exactly 4KB or 4096 bytes. Most original GCE games were 4K with a few stretching to the extravagance of 8K. The Vectrex can address a maximum of 32K of on cart memory. Thanks to clever work by John Macallan this can be spilt between extra ROM and RAM. Spikes Circus uses 8K of onboard RAM, (the rotated clubs are pre-rendered to the RAM on boot, the side view of Spike's Unicycle is rendered in real time, and the top down view of the cycle on the tightrope is pre-loaded into ROM). The rest of the RAM is used to quickly access level gradients and heights for convenience. This leaves 24KB of potential ROM space to use for the game. Spike's Circus uses exactly 22,222bytes without any contrivance or artificial padding in the source code. Why 22,222? Well because it's game number 2 of course! :)

Joust Evolution

Vectorzoa is proud to reveal the Mystery game to be Joust Evolution.
JE will feature the classic game with additional mounts and styles of movement radiacally affecting strategy.

A teaser shot is shown here. The ledge is NOT part of the overlay but is raster generated. The Joust mount is of course Vector generated. JE is the first game to effectively combine Rasters and Vectors to any significant degree, benefitting from the strengths of each. The animated flame pits are another great example of this.