GCE
Vectrex creators
General Consumer Electronics, the company that created the Vectrex console in 1982 before being acquired by Milton Bradley.
GCE (General Consumer Electronics) was the company that created the Vectrex, the only home console with built-in vector graphics display. Founded in 1981, GCE released the Vectrex in 1982 before being acquired by Milton Bradley that same year.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1981
- Product: Vectrex
- Acquired by: Milton Bradley (1982)
- End: 1984 (with MB exit from games)
The Vectrex
| Aspect | Detail |
|---|---|
| Concept | Home arcade with vector display |
| Released | 1982 |
| Price | $199 |
| Technology | 6809 CPU, vector CRT |
Company history
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1981 | GCE founded |
| 1982 | Vectrex released, MB acquires GCE |
| 1983 | Continued development under MB |
| 1984 | MB exits games market, Vectrex discontinued |
What BYTE said at launch
BYTE ran a First Look at the Vectrex in December 1982, and the verdict is worth having in full because of how the story ends:
Here is one of the greatest game machines we have seen this year. With superb vector graphics, excellent sound, cartridges for some of the best coin-operated arcade games, and a suggested retail price of $200, the Vectrex Arcade System is a good bet to score big with the consumer… Developed and distributed by General Consumer Electronics (GCE), a subsidiary of the Milton Bradley Company, the Vectrex comes closer to duplicating a real arcade game than any other game system on the market.
Two details the spec table above does not carry, both of which were selling points rather than trivia:
It did not need the television. BYTE: “Because the Vectrex is a stand-alone system, you won’t have to fight other people for use of the television set. Just take your Vectrex and plug it in wherever you have an electrical outlet.” In 1982, in a house with one television, that is the whole pitch.
The controller detached, and a second one plugged in. A detachable control panel with a self-centering joystick and four buttons, plus an optional second panel for two players.
⚠ BYTE describes GCE as already a Milton Bradley subsidiary at launch, which refines the timeline in the table above: the acquisition was not a later rescue of a successful product but the arrangement the Vectrex shipped under.
Eighteen months later
Set that launch review beside what Big K reported in June 1984:
In America, Vectrex [company] Milton Bradley has stopped production of the system and is dumping redundant stock at low prices.
“One of the greatest game machines we have seen this year” to dumped stock in eighteen months. Nothing in the hardware changed. What changed was the market it had been launched into — see Milton Bradley for how the British end of that was handled, and the 1983 crash for the wider collapse.
The Vectrex is usually filed as a machine that was too strange to succeed. The period record suggests something less flattering to the market and more flattering to GCE: it was reviewed as the best thing of its year, and killed by timing.
Legacy
GCE’s brief existence produced one of gaming’s most unique consoles. The Vectrex’s singular technology ensured its place in gaming history, and the active collector/homebrew community keeps the platform alive decades later.