The vector arcade era was shaped by a small group of engineers and designers — most of them in their twenties and thirties — who pushed the boundaries of what coin-operated games could be. These are their stories.
Ed Logg is one of the most accomplished game designers in arcade history. He joined Atari in 1978 and co-designed Asteroids (1979) with Lyle Rains, who conceived the original idea of a game where you shoot rocks that break into smaller rocks. Logg wrote the code and refined the gameplay into what became Atari's best-selling arcade game ever, with over 70,000 units sold.
Logg's career extended far beyond vector gaming. He went on to design Centipede (1981, with Dona Bailey), Gauntlet (1985), and many other titles. But Asteroids remains his most iconic creation — a game so perfectly balanced that its core mechanics have been imitated for decades.
Lyle Rains was the executive at Atari who conceived the core idea behind Asteroids — a game where you shoot rocks that split into smaller pieces. As VP of Engineering, Rains played a crucial management role in Atari's coin-op division during its most prolific period. He championed the project and paired it with Ed Logg to bring the concept to life. Rains understood both the engineering and the business side of arcade games, making him instrumental in greenlighting some of Atari's boldest projects.
Dave Theurer created two of the most celebrated arcade games of all time: Missile Command (1980) and Tempest (1981). For Tempest, Theurer was reportedly inspired by a nightmare about monsters crawling up out of a hole toward him. He transformed that vision into a game where players defend the rim of a geometric tube against waves of enemies ascending from the depths.
Tempest was the first game to use Atari's color vector hardware and the spinner control, creating an experience of speed and intensity that was genuinely new. Theurer's design work on the game's enemy patterns, level progression, and the feeling of vertigo looking "down the tube" demonstrated a level of game design craftsmanship that still influences designers today.
Ed Rotberg designed Battlezone (1980), the first-person wireframe tank combat game that became one of the most influential titles in gaming history. Battlezone's 3D perspective — rendered entirely in monochrome green vectors — anticipated first-person shooters by over a decade.
The game attracted attention from the U.S. Army, which contracted Atari to create a modified version called "The Bradley Trainer" (also known as "Army Battlezone" or "Military Battlezone") for training gunners on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Rotberg was reportedly uncomfortable with the military application of his work, and this became one of the earliest instances of ethical debate about the military use of video game technology.
Larry Rosenthal was the engineer who effectively launched the commercial vector arcade era. For his graduate work at MIT, Rosenthal built a custom vector display processor and used it to create Space Wars (1977) — the first vector arcade game. He brought his hardware and game to Cinematronics, a small San Diego-based company, which manufactured and distributed it.
Rosenthal's vector hardware became the foundation for Cinematronics' entire product line. After a dispute over royalties, Rosenthal left Cinematronics and founded Vectorbeam, which produced a few titles before being acquired by Cinematronics. His original circuit designs powered nearly every Cinematronics vector game that followed.
Mike Hally led the design of the Star Wars arcade game (1983), widely considered the crown jewel of color vector gaming. The game used first-person color vectors to recreate the Death Star trench run from the 1977 film, complete with digitized speech from the movie's actors. It was housed in a distinctive sit-down cockpit cabinet and became one of the highest-grossing arcade games of 1983.
Hally also worked on The Empire Strikes Back (1985), the last commercial vector arcade game ever produced, which recreated the Battle of Hoth.
Owen Rubin designed Major Havoc (1983), one of the most technically ambitious vector games ever created. Major Havoc combined space combat sequences with platforming levels — an unusual hybrid that showcased the versatility of Atari's color vector hardware. Rubin also created Space Duel (1982), a color vector sequel to Asteroids that introduced cooperative two-player gameplay.
Tim Skelly was the primary game designer at Cinematronics during their most productive vector era. He designed Star Castle (1980), Rip Off (1980), Warrior (1979), and several other titles. Star Castle — where players must penetrate rotating shield rings to destroy a central cannon — was one of Cinematronics' biggest commercial successes.
Skelly had a talent for distilling game concepts to their purest form, which suited the vector medium perfectly. Rip Off is notable as one of the earliest cooperative multiplayer arcade games, where two players defend a stash of fuel canisters from waves of enemies.
Howard Delman was the engineer who designed the Digital Vector Generator (DVG) — the custom chip at the heart of Atari's first vector arcade games, including Asteroids and Lunar Lander. He later co-developed the more advanced Analog Vector Generator (AVG) that powered Atari's color vector titles. Without Delman's hardware, Atari's entire vector game line would not have been possible.