Conclusion

     The fate and legacy of MineStorm and Vectrex illustrate several things about the lifecycle of such technologies. The timing of when a piece of media is developed and made accessible to the public is crucial in the way it is received at the time and how it is remembered by history. A confluence of economic, technological and cultural factors, years in the making, made 1982 and 1983 particularly unreceptive years for new home arcade technology. Even if the tech and its text is sophisticated, unique and appealing to the consumer of the era, the greater forces of the capitalistically advanced society that were the prerequisite for the text’s creation in the first place can still prove devastating if the conditions are just past right. If Vectrex had been ready and released even a year earlier, its outcome may have been very different. On this scale, context is impossible to predict, and yet still seems more important to the outcome of a text’s life than it’s inherent qualities.

     MineStorm also demonstrates how versatile compatibility is one of the features we prioritize in our technology, and if a text doesn’t deliver this compatibility, it is more likely to be abandoned. Today, our computers, phones, watches, headphones - they all communicate with one another. And through this communication, they prioritize information that is transmissible in this fashion. But is information that isn’t available to us in these methods not valuable? A fun and challenging video game, as engaging as its counterparts, the rarity of MineStorm illustrates what is lost when we disregard or are unable to access a text because of its format. 

     In this instance of using one text technology to profile another, we’ve gained a comprehensive perspective on the subject in how readily accessible and concisely presentable information is on this platform. Omeka allows for the sourcing and placement of images and text that can provide a wealth of background knowledge and contextual information that help capture MineStorm’s unique time and space. As rarified as Vectrex is, reviewing MineStorm in Omeka helps broaden the audience, perhaps reducing the game’s endangerment in the process. What is lost in this endeavor is the experience of gameplay. It can be described and photographed and contextualized, but how it feels to hold the controller in your hand and manipulate the avatar or hear the sound of the Vectrex system as it buzzes and beeps along to your commands, can’t be captured in this representation. The tactile features of the original technology are absent. 

     What the Vectrex game system and the preloaded game MineStorm communicated to users at that time, were messages concerning the rapid and significant advancements in creating a responsive interface between humans and technology. Though not unique to Vectrex, the experience of interacting with technology in this way changed attitudes toward the relationship between humans and computers. The affordability of machines like the Vectrex and early home computers gave humans their first widespread taste of interacting with responsive computer technology. Humans had developed a taste for interacting with machines that enabled them to extend the reach of their actions and communications in limitless ways. For many of them, MineStorm and other games like it offered people their first opportunity to have a direct interaction and control of a piece of sophisticated technology, and this helped move us toward the level of technological enmeshment we experience today.