
May of 1982:
Work is immediately started on other games such as the Vectrex original
Cosmic Chasm. Conceptually designed by Jeff Corsiglia, and programmed by Bill Hawkins, this turned out to be the only game converted in to a coinop by the Cinematronics agreement. According to Bill, it only took him six weeks to do Cosmic Chasm (unlike the three months and 12 boxes of disks to do Rip Off) because while the rest of the programmers were out of town one weekend he stole two more drives from another programmer's setup.
Somewhere along the line, it was decided that color overlays would be used. Overlays, which originated in coinops, served a multitude of purposes. In the early through late 70's, coinops were in black and white. If you wanted color, you would literally affix colored cellophane strips to the monitor screen, such as was done in Atari's Breakout or Taito's Space Invaders. Likewise, if the playfield was to be to complicated to draw (be it in detail, or a color problem) because of the graphics limitations of the time, overlays could be used to render permanent backgrounds or give ambiance. Such as in the asteroid backround in Atari's Asteroid Deluxe, or the stairwell in Cinematronic's Warrior. Other overlays would be on the protective plastic screen itself instead of the monitor, and add anything from exciting borders to game instructions.
Come back to the VecNews, this series will be continued!