According to the Vectrex manual, the story includes "protecting your comrades from alien vessels trying to infiltrate your culture" and "protecting the sovereignty of your planet".
Various ships appear on the horizon of the trench, strongly resembling TIE fighters, and the player has to shoot them before they destroy the player's ship. The player is initially given 60 seconds, and the counter continually decreases, but increases as the player eliminates enemies. Twenty seconds is given for every 10,000 points. It is quite possible that a good player can play indefinitely. The player continues to fly down the trench towards a specific target, similar to the Star Wars Death Star target. As the player progressed, the game became progressively more difficult. Similar to the flying saucer from Space Invaders, the command ship periodically appears and attempts to shoot at the player. If the command ship was not quickly destroyed, the player lost 800 points.
Besides the fire button, there are three buttons that control the speed of the crosshair.
Scoring
- Command ships - 800
- Starship - 500
- Rocket - 300
- Rocket - 100
- Bomber - 100