MyMedia Retrospective - Atari Lynx

What is MyMedia Games Network Retrospective?

MyMedia Games Network Retrospective is a regular feature that will take a look at various video game systems, technological advancements and accessories from the past. This may be a trip down memory lane for some people or a history lesson for others. Over time many companies have contributed to the video game industry in their own way, whether it’s a revolutionary step forward for others to follow, or a prime example of what not to do. With that said, let’s take a peek into the past.

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The Lynx was Atari’s entry into the lucrative portable gaming market and pitted the company up against the Nintendo Game Boy which was released a few moths prior. In September 1989, Atari released the world’s first backlit colour portable gaming system packed with innovative features for its time and beating both the Sega Game Gear and the NEC Turbo express to the punch. The Lynx wasn't Atari’s fist attempt at capturing the portable gaming market as their first portable system was the Atari Touch Me. This was a remake of one of their arcade titles that had players reproducing a sound and light combination that was emitted by the Touch Me system by pressing buttons.

The Lynx wasn’t an original Atari concept either. A company called Epyx created it in 1987 with the original name being the Handy Game but due to Epyx’s recent financial issues a committed partner needed to be sourced as Epyx could not manufacture and market the system on their own. Epyx’s Handy Game was plugged to potential partners one of which was Nintendo. Nintendo naturally declined the offer as they already had their own concept of portable gaming in the pipeline but along came Atari who was impressed with the Handy Game and was quick to jump on board. A deal was made where Atari would take care of production and marketing while Epyx would develop software. The only changes Atari made to the Handy Game before released as the Lynx was the removal of a thumb stick that was on the D-pad and the swapping of the internal speaker.

Compared to the other portable gaming consoles of that era the Atari Lynx had far more advanced technology such as a backlit colour screen along with hardware that could perform a number of graphical special effects including the ability to draw filled polygons. However all this visual performance came at the cost of excessive battery consumption with the required 6 x AA batteries only lasting around 4 to 6 hours. Just like the other colour screen portable systems of this era the Lynx suffered from the lack of available battery technology. The Lynx featured two sets of action buttons which made it the first ambidextrous portable console. Both right and left handed people could feel comfortable using the system. All that was needed to make the switch from right to left handed operation was turning the console around and pressing the ‘flip’ button to flip the image over to suit.

In 1991 a second version of the Lynx was released unofficially referred to as the Lynx2. This second version addressed a few negative issues that the first version had as well as integrating a few new features. One of the common complaints about the first Lynx was its over all size as the system was quite large for a portable system. Apparently Atari believed that a larger looking console would indicate more value for money. The new smaller and sleeker design had the same ambidextrous button layout but with a slight change in both the button and D-pad shape along with added rubber hand grips on each side. Some small technical improvements was the fitment of a stereo headphone jack replacing the previous monaural headphone output and more clear backlit screen that now allows the user to turn of the backlighting feature to conserve power. Atari promoted the second version of the Lynx with a new marketing campaign and packaging the system on its own minus the accessories that came with the first version which chopped almost $100USD of the price.

The Lynx continued on to have moderate success with a rough total of around 500,000 units being sold but these sale figures pail in comparison with the Nintendo Game Boy that topped out at 118.7 million units sold worldwide. As well as having the Nintendo Game Boy dominating the portable gaming market Sega stepped in with the Sega Game Gear that had strong franchise games to help promote the system. It wasn’t long before the Lynx was pushed down the ladder of popular portable consoles and in 1994 Atari decided it was in their best interest to focus their efforts on up and coming Jaguar console.

Even though the Atari Lynx wasn’t as successful as its competitors at the time it did help shape the standard of portable videogame consoles we enjoy today thanks to its innovative ideas. This achievement was recognised this year at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award is given out by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in technical or engineering development.

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Even though the Lynx was one of the first portable gaming consoles released it sill had its fair share of available accessories that many of which are standard issue now with our current generation of portable gaming consoles.

Having a colour backlit screen and a powerful processor takes its toll on regular AA batteries so Atari released a few alternate power sources to help ease the pain of continuously purchasing batteries. An AC mains adaptor, a portable battery pack that houses six D-cell batteries providing around 20 hours of power and a car cigarette lighter adaptor that could power two Lynx consoles simultaneously.

Today Bluetooth and WiFi is used to enjoy multiplayer games on portable consoles but back when the Lynx was available link cables were used. By using the pre packaged ComLynx Cable it was possible to link up to 17 other Lynx consoles together. Originally Atari had plans for a wireless infrared linking system called RedEye but this was scrapped before released.

After investing a decent amount of money into the expensive Lynx it made sense to protect the console anyway you can and this could be done by using a carry case. The accessory is available for virtually all portable consoles from past to present and Atari offered two versions with the Lynx. One was a carry pouch which held the Lynx unit, 24 game cards and a limited number of accessories. The next step up was the carry case that pretty much could hold everything available for the Lynx plus a large quantity of games.

Not the most common of accessories available but it was functional. The Lynx Sun Visor does as the name suggest and blocks the sun from causing glare on the Lynx’s display it also doubles up as a screen protector when folded down. Two versions were available one for the Lynx classic and one for the Lynx2 both versions served the same purpose.

Accessory images sourced from atariage.com

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The Lynx used small game cartridges that inserted into the side of the unit hidden beneath a flap in a similar fashion as the Sony PSP houses its memory stick. Games load from the cartridge to the systems internal RAM that unfortunately resulted in lengthy load times. Three versions of game cartridges were made all of which served the same purpose. These revisions were made because of customers complaining about the difficulties they were having extracting game cartridges form the Lynx. The first cartridge design was flat with a very small ridge at the end of the cartridge and was easy to stack up for storage but was notoriously difficult to remove as there was nothing to grip onto. Atari then added a second ridge on the cartridges but that didn’t improve the game extraction problems much. The last and final cartridge revision had a curved lip instead of the ridges and was the easiest to remove of the lot. With the final revision of the cartridge design in conjunction with the Lynx 2 unit the cartridge extraction problem was greatly improved.

Apart from the above mentioned faults the main issue with games for the Lynx was the lack of quality titles. The majority of released games were developed in house with only a few displaying what the Lynx was capable of doing. Close to original arcade ports such as Joust, Rampart, Klax and original tiles such as Chip's Challenge, Warbirds, and Gates of Zendocon gave consumers an idea of what was possible on the Lynx. Unfortunately the Lynx didn’t get strong support from third party developers like the Nintendo Game Boy had and also lacked popular first party franchise games that Nintendo and Sega proudly owned.

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• A.P.B.
• Alpine Games
• Awesome Golf
• Baseball Heroes
• Basketbrawl
• Batman Returns
• BattleWheels
• Battlezone 2000
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
• Block Out
• Blue Lightning
• Bubble Trouble
• California Games
• Championship Rally
• Checkered Flag
• Chip's Challenge
• Crystal Mines II
• Crystal Mines II: Buried Treasure
• Cybervirus
• Desert Strike
• Dinolympics
• Dirty Larry: Renegade Cop
• Double Dragon
• Dracula the Undead
• ElectroCop
• European Soccer Challenge
• Fat Bobby
• Fidelity Ultimate Chess Challenge
• Gates of Zendocon
• Gauntlet: The Third Encounter
• Gordo 106
• Hard Drivin'
• Hockey
• Hydra
• Hyperdrome
• Ishido: The Way of the Stones
• Jimmy Connors' Tennis
• Joust
• Klax
• Krazy Ace Miniature Golf
• Kung Food
• Lemmings
• Lexis
• Loopz
• Lynx Casino
• Lynx Othello
• Malibu Bikini Volleyball
• Ms. Pac-Man
• NFL Football
• Ninja Gaiden
• Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
• Pac-Land
• Paperboy
• Pinball Jam
• Pit-Fighter
• PokerMania
• Ponx
• Power Factor
• Qix
• Raiden
• Rampage
• Rampart
• Remnant
• RoadBlasters
• Road Riot 4WD
• Robo-Squash
• Robotron:2084
• Rygar
• Scrapyard Dog
• SFX
• Shadow of the Beast
• Shanghai
• S.I.M.I.S.
• Sokomania
• Steel Talons
• S.T.U.N. Runner
• Super Asteroids/Missile Command
• Super Off-Road
• Super Skweek
• Switchblade II
• T-Tris
• Todd's Adventures in Slime World
• Toki
• Tournament Cyberball
• Turbo Sub
• Viking Child
• Warbirds
• World Class Fussball/Soccer
• Xenophobe
• Xybots
• Zarlor Mercenary

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• Processor: MOS 65SC02 processor running at up to 4 MHz (~3.6 MHz average) , 8-bit CPU, 16-bit address space
• Graphics engine
• Hardware drawing support
• Unlimited number of high-speed sprites with collision detection
• Hardware high-speed sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects
• Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data
• Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling
• Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second)
• 160 x 102 standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels)
• Math co-processor
• Hardware 16-bit × 16-bit → 32-bit multiply with optional accumulation; 32-bit ÷ 16-bit → 16-bit divide
• Memory: 64K RAM
• Sound: 4 channel sound 8-bit DAC for each channel
• Colour: 4096 colour palette, 16 simultaneous colours from palette per scan line
• Resolution: 160 x 102 (16,320 addressable pixels)
• Screen Size: 3.5" diagonal (approximately 3.25" x 1.88")

Sources:  Wikipedia.com atariage.com myds.com.au youtube

 

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Written by: Matthew Armitage