The atari lynx was a good handheld, i live in the uk and back when the lynx was doing the rounds we used to have a store called Dixons and they would have a games corner and a podium with handhelds bolted on to bendy sticks and the atari lynx was there along side the game gear and game boy, they would always have californa games running on a lynx 1 and i always remember being super impressived by it especially the screen, on the odd occasion you would see blue lightning, i bought a lynx a few years later and it still remains my favourite of the old 90s handhelds.
@@videostash413 the original game boy was very difficult to see in a way the Lynx never was the ghosting of the screen made it very difficult on the original DMG to see really anything Pocket was better but even then.
The interesting thing about the Lynx is that it’s sprite scaling capabilities are on par, if not better, than Mode 7 on the Super NES. There’s not a lot of software that takes advantage of it though, unfortunately.
Not exactly. The mode 7 had rotation, and Lynx couldn’t do that. It could scale a bunch of sprites at once. But a lot of tricks it could do because of the crazy low resolution screen (unimpressive) and a special graphics chip (impressive) It was a head of its time handheld for sure, but I think the size of it was bigger than the Japanese Pc Engine. No?
@@sloppynyuszi The SNES allow more effects on a single layer while the Atari Lynx allow for distortion on multiple sprites allowing to replicate depth effect from Arcade racing games. For similar effect on regular consoles, you have to wait for Atari Jaguar (Super Burnout), Sega Saturn and obviously the Neo-Geo.
You can only scale a single layer on the SNES, it can be made to look like it's doing sprite scaling but it's not! Check out Electrocop to understand how crazy the Lynx is
the recharged games and atari 50 were a good idea (though with 50 you have to scroll a timeline for vids and images rather than view it as a documentary, though the game 100 game library is separate). Just don't buy black widow recharged on xbox as it bugs out to prevent you from resuming the 2nd time you play. Was fun on switch.
16 colors on screen was a good amount for the time for a portable console. The Gameboy had 4 monochromatic shades, for comparison. The Game Gear had 32, but it came out an year later.
I think the low resolution really hampers these handheld for today’s taste. I loved those handhelds in the 90s, but can’t really play them in emulators with odd exceptions. But I rather emulate Master system versions of game gear games. Sonic 2 is night and day between the two system.
Atari and quality control are like oil and water. Always have been. From the beginning with Pong, to the Atari 2600 and 5200, to the Atari Jaguar and Lynx, to the 1983 video game crash and ET, to in the more recent past, Dragonball Z Sagas and Dragonball Z Taiketsu. They just don't get quality control.
Atari didnt care. Epyx had to bring in someone to manufacture the Lynx and market it internationally (or stop designing the console). Only Atari was interested, but with the reputation of Jack and Sam Tramiel, several Epyx programmers quit when they heard Atari was being brought in. Atari made money by suing Epyx for breach of contract on several occasions in this venture, causing Epyx to go bankrupt.
@@scottythegreat1 Yes, it may also be true that they had intentions of doing that from the get go. It was beneficial to atari to bankrupt Epyx to gain the handheld for themself and not pay royalties. The devs that left understood more than the man making the decisions, Bummer, Thanks for the info it was interesting to look into.
Atari needs to bring out Lynx and Jaguar compilations games for all popular consoles. There's some on the Atari 50th anniversary compilation but only a few. Also Activision 2600 compilation would be cool
Everyone knew how great the console was, but it was expensive compared to the Game Boy and didnt have the intellectual property Nintendo had (nor the third party support). Also, no one wanted to deal with Jack Tramiel due to his reputation of bankrupting his parts suppliers.
Lynx Hardware was insane for his age not only scaling but also sprite multiplexer that allow in fact endless sprites on screen with no slow down. too bad Atari make a lot of marketing mistakes : in Fact Tramiel know exactly how to sell a computer ( success of Atari ST was an example) but not know how to sell a games device.
The Lynx was definitely a superior hardware. And it did have some third-party support for games like Double Dragon and Rygar. But I'm sure that it suffered from the same battery-drainage problem as the Game Gear.
@@0000maxx0000 If I remember correct, with the Mk2 version, you could get 6 hours of play out of good quality batteries, cheap batteries never did well with it.
Yeah, this was way ahead of its time. Its failure to out compete Gameboy shows that with gaming systems, like most other things, many factors determine success.
Easily more than half, it would have one of the best, if not the best good vs bad ratio games library, helps when the library is small. Yes there's plenty of good homebrew stuff for the system. It's also an excellent system to collect for, you can still get everything boxed and most in sealed condition.
@off1K Yeah Ok you could be right so maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of it's Library, Don't get me wrong Dude, I would Love to have a Lynx in my collection an original or Lynx 2 or Both! Another holy grail System I would like in my collection is a Neo Geo Pocket Color! ( NGPC.)
Steel Talons looks like a proper flight sim by the standards of the time, probably a bit ambitious for a handheld! I like the graphics of Slime World, it looked distinctive. There look to be some good games on the system, though I remember at the time it had its critics (mainly for being battery hungry, I think).
I'm sure it was a nice handheld for its time, but by modern standards not much seems to have been lost. I don't know why, but I'd rather play a Game Boy version of a console game like those from the NES than an Atari Lynx version. It feels like in its attempt to do more, it honestly did a whole lot less from a modern perspective. Trying to deliver on full color games on a handheld and a more console-like experience just wasn't all that doable at the time. I used to lament that GB, GBA and other handheld games weren't quite like their full console releases when ported over, but now I realize it was a blessing. They'd have nothing worth mentioning about them if they were. I mean why today would you choose to play, for example, the GBA ports of NES/SNES Super Mario games, when you could just play the NES/SNES Super Mario games instead? On your phone or a retro-geared third-party handheld. Wild that there are only 76 games for this platform, though. That seems so low a number, but I guess unlike Nintendo and their Game Boy, Atari migrated to a newer system with the Jaguar much sooner... and the Game Boy Color was essentially the same system, just with a visual enhancement, so arguably it's not even a new system, though there were some games released that only worked on the newer handheld. I'm also probably biased. I've never actually liked Atari all that much. Their golden era was before my time and I took no notice of them beyond the initial Atari system we had for a short while (probably near or maybe even after Atari as a company died and was sold off) and their name publishing a few games I was playing, like Neverwinter Nights, the Bioware D&D RPG I loved as a kid.
I used to play mine for hours upon hours, especially crystal mines and never overheated. But your correct about the batteries, I used mine with the wall plug.
With all due respect to anyone who loves this console, but nearly all of those games seem really bad to me. Just a few of them I wouldn't mind trying out, but far fewer than the showing on the Gameboy or Gamegear. Granted, the comparison is hardly fair due to the differences in library sizes, but still. For all you afficionados out there, are the games better than they look?
Это какое то недоразумение, а не портативка хД Ни 1ну игру не советую даже пробовать играть, советую забыть как страшный сон. Но автору всё ещё благодарность, за его труд о/
❗BLOODY HELL, this was a TERRIBLE Handheld. NO WONDER it was beaten by 'GameBoy' and even 'Game Gear'. Despite being able to get ROMs for Free, I still can't find enough games I to want to play...
I owned all 3 and the Lynx 2 console blew the other 2 away. Superior graphics by far. Great sampled sound. Did you even play the real system? The Gameboy was overrated as fuck and I sold it. Never looked back.
@@leighdappa Wow. Play the best lynx games they make the gameboy look like a toy. Lemmings desert strike , Toki, stun runner road blasters, warbirds etc etc
It wasn't zoomed in. The Linx had a very low resolution screen and since the sprites were pixel accurate to the arcade version they look really big. For reference, the Linx screen is 160x102 and the original Double Dragon is 336x240.
