[sehugg]

Last time I played a well-maintained Asteroids cabinet, bullets had obvious bloom, but I was surprised to not see a trail. There wasn't any noticeable bloom or trails on the other objects. I believe the arcade monitors have fast decay phosphor like in regular TV sets, so any trail would come from persistence of vision, probably due to the brightness of the bullet.

I'm not sure about the Vectrex CRT, it may have longer persistence phosphor.

[bitwize]

The Asteroids I've played had a slow-decay phosphor and trails on the bullets (not so much the asteroids, UFOs, etc). If the cabinet you played had its tube replaced with a TV picture tube, its display characteristics may have changed.