When most people think of vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), they probably imagine the clock on a microwave or the equalizer on a piece of stereo equipment. But there was a brief period where the glowing phosphor displays were actually used for portable game systems before things like LCD took over.While the salvaged display that [José Luis Monteiro] and his father have been hacking on certainly isn’t portable, it does play a mean Space Invaders. It’s vertical resolution is a bit tight for the gameplay, but the various sprites look fantastic and the art style works particularly well with the retro VFD vibe.Just as with their recent efforts to bring Snake to a seven-segment display, a great deal of attention is given to explaining the nuts and bolts of how these vintage displays work. The documentation and source code they’be provided are certainly valuable to anyone else who might be hacking on this type of hardware, but the video they’ve produced is entertaining and informative enough that it’s worth checking out even if you aren’t actively trying to port DOOM over to your old microwave.If you’re interested in learning even more about these fascinating old school displays, we’ve previously covered some excellent deep dives into the tech.