fly-back high-voltage system running. The demo led to a system originally conceived as a handheld called the Mini Arcade but, as Smith Engineering shopped the idea around to developers, it evolved into a tabletop with nine-inch screen.

The system was licensed to General Consumer Electronics in 1981. After a brief hardware and software development period, the Vectrex was unveiled on 7 June 1982 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in