Vectorman is built from balls. Instead of one large drawing, the hero of BlueSky Software’s 1995 Mega Drive game is a loose assembly of glowing spheres, a head, a chest, arms and legs, each moving on its own. Sega’s preview in Sega Visions explained the idea in terms of the story: “Since he is composed of spherical vector pieces, he can rearrange himself to accommodate the many environments of the game.” In play that means a robot that can turn into a drill, a bomb or a fish, with what the American box promised was “silky-smooth animation”.
It arrived late in the Mega Drive’s life, in the autumn of 1995, when Sega was launching the Saturn. At that year’s E3 show, Edge found that “the only Mega Drive title of note was an Earthworm Jim-inspired platformer called VectorMan”.
Fast facts
- Developer: BlueSky Software. Rich Karpp and Mark Lorenzen designed it, Karpp led the programming, and Jon Holland wrote the music.
- Publisher: Sega, with Jerry Markota as its producer.
- Released: North America, October 1995; Britain and Europe, November 1995, at £49.99 in the UK.
- Platform: Mega Drive (Genesis in North America).
- Sequel: Vectorman 2 (1996).
The story
The box set the scene: “By the year 2049 Earth has been turned into a toxic waste dump! Humankind has fled into space leaving behind an army of mechanized ‘Orbots’ to clean up the mess!” Vectorman is the humblest of them, a robot who flies a barge of toxic sludge into the sun to burn it. While he is away, the orbot leader, Raster, is accidentally attached to a live nuclear missile, goes mad and, as Warhead, makes himself dictator of the other robots. Vectorman returns to find himself the only orbot left to stop him.
Spheres
The spheres were the point of the game. Computer and Video Games spelled out two advantages. Being “made of unconnected spheres” lets a character be “expressive with your body shape”, and spheres look the same from every angle, which “means clever games like Vectorman can warp the play area to whatever degree they fancy”. Its example was an overhead stage in which Vectorman rides a thin, twisting rail while shooting at the fingers of a giant scaled boss. The magazine also admired the “light-sourcing” on the spheres, shaded as if lit from one side.
The graphics were made by rendering 3D models, and Retro Gamer reported in 2008 that “it’s said that Sega envisioned Vectorman as an answer to Rare’s Donkey Kong Country”, the Super Nintendo game of 1994 whose graphics were also rendered from 3D models. Wikipedia puts the hero at 23 separate sprites moving in unison, a technique it says Sega called “Vector Piece Animation”.
Playing it
The game is a run-and-gun platformer. Vectorman shoots in eight directions with a ball gun in his hand and can “boot-blast”, firing the thrusters in his soles for a second jump in mid-air; the exhaust burns enemies beneath him. Its stages are numbered as days. In most of them the target is to reach the end; a few are overhead stages built around a single boss.
Power-ups come from destroying television sets scattered through each stage. Computer and Video Games read this as a little joke about “freeing the masses from media slavery”. Some give limited-ammunition weapons; the box named “Shockwave, Bolo, and Orb”, the last of which clears the screen. Others turn Vectorman into something else for a few seconds: a drill that bores through floors, a bomb that blows up walls, a jet, a fish for the underwater sections, a missile and a dune buggy. Computer and Video Games found the transformations “temporary in the extreme (ie — about six seconds)”.
Reception
Computer and Video Games reviewed it in November 1995 and complained that the Mega Drive was capable of far more than most of the games it got. Vectorman was the exception: “The graphics are stunning, the game design shows — shock horror — real imagination and it’s hard enough to challenge any player, no matter how experienced (and jaded). One of the best releases of the year.” Sega Retro’s survey of the period press finds it praised for its graphics, level design and techno soundtrack, with high scores in GamePro, Mean Machines Sega and Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Not everyone took to the look. Looking back in 2008, Retro Gamer thought its “seaweed greens, blacks and greys” made it hard to love beside brighter games, and that it never matched the popularity of Donkey Kong Country. It still called it “this brilliant gaming gem”.
In North America Sega turned some copies into a competition. Specially programmed cartridges showed a “you win” screen at the end, and the first player to finish one won $25,000. GamePro reported in April 1996 that the winner was a 12-year-old from Albuquerque, who went on to appear in a Sega commercial.
Later history
Vectorman 2 followed in 1996. Sega Retro records that later attempts at a third game, including one for the PlayStation 2 announced in 2003, were cancelled, and that BlueSky closed in 2001. An animated film was planned for 1997 and never made.
The game itself has stayed in print. It was included in Sega Mega Drive Collection (2006), released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007 and 2008, and has appeared on later Sega compilations and Mega Drive Mini consoles. It reached Japan only through these later releases.
Sources
- Sega Visions, May 1995, p. 69: preview (the story, Raster, the “spherical vector pieces”, the morphs, seven weapons and the Boot Blast).
- Edge issue 23, August 1995: E3 1995 report (VectorMan among the best games shown; “the only Mega Drive title of note”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 168, November 1995, pp. 48–49: review (the television sets, the spheres, the morphs and their duration, the overhead rail stage, light-sourcing, the verdict).
- GamePro issue 91, April 1996: the $25,000 Play to Win prize.
- GamePro issue 95, August 1996: Vectorman 2 on sale.
- Retro Gamer issue 29, 2006: Sega Mega Drive Collection contents. Issue 52, 2008, p. 38, “Retro Revival: Vectorman” (Donkey Kong Country, the colours, the TV sets, the morphs). Issue 112, 2013: November 1995 in retrospect.
- Sega Retro, “Vectorman” (web, secondary): release dates and prices, the US manual’s credits, the box text, the weapons, morphs and stages, the competition cartridges, reception, the cancelled sequels, BlueSky’s closure, the film and the re-releases. https://segaretro.org/Vectorman
- Wikipedia, “Vectorman” (web, secondary): the 23 sprites and “Vector Piece Animation”, the designers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorman