Retro Revival: PVG Pays Tribute to the Atari Lynx

Right around the time that Atari hired its first on-staff psychic and employees began to organize naked rooftop jacuzzi parties – in other words, right when the company hit its apogee in terms of corporate indulgence — someone had the brilliant idea to introduce a portable version of the madly successful Atari home console. Call it coincidence, but we suspect that some of the insanity — and certainly some of the flagrant excess — which permeated the halls of Atari Headquarters in California circa 1987 found its way into Atari Lynx handheld. An iconoclastic device that was years ahead of its time, the Atari Lynx introduced many innovations that are still in use today, and it deserves to be remembered (besides marking the beginning of the end for Atari) as one of the most impressive handheld gaming platforms ever built and rarely played. As part of a series of articles on the history of handheld gaming, we bring you our tribute to the Atari Lynx (1988 - 1995).

The Lynx actually began its life outside of Atari at Epyx Games, where a small team of engineers had hacked together a prototype portable they were calling the “Handy” in 1987. Strapped for cash and in no position to actually market the device, Epyx gladly sold the design on to Atari, which was a major publisher for its software titles. Atari president Jack Tramiel sat on the idea for more than a year, while engineers made a few minor design changes. Finally, the system had its commercial debut in the fall of 1989, just in time for the holidays. Unfortunately for Atari, the Nintendo Gameboy launched that same year, and despite its technologically inferior design, cost far less and was much more widely available at retail. Those who could afford the $199 for the Atari system that year got a fairly impressive package which included the Atari Lynx handheld, carrying case, Com-lynx cable and Californa Games. Deja-vu moment: Gee, what other technologically impressive handheld device currently sells for $199?

The Lynx went through two revisions, with the second adding a more robust case and slightly longer battery life.

The Lynx contained a number of innovative features that set it apart from the competition in the late 1980s Most importantly, the Lynx was the first hadheld gaming device to feature a full color screen, something that the Gameboy family lacked until 1998. In the days before rechargeable battery packs, the Lynx took a whopping 6 AA batteries, which gave it a play time of about 4 hours. The Lynx eschewed a vertical layout for a landscape orientation, placing the 3.5″ LCD between the buttons and d-pad. Amazingly, the device was orignally designed with an analogue thumbstick in place of the directional buttons, but this was later scrapped for being too unwieldy (in 1989, nobody seemed to miss this feature). Worried that the device would alienate lefties, the designers thoughtfully included two sets of buttons, allowing users to flip the console 180 degrees if they wished to invert their controls (making one wonder how lefties have managed all these years with the standard NES controller). Another feature of the Lynx’s fast-and-loose approach to orientation was that games could make use of a vertical mode, giving games more of an arcade cabinet feel. One game to really make use of this feature was Gauntlet, pictured below.

A small but loyal community of enthusiasts and game developers have kept the Lynx alive. Development rights passed into the public domain in 1999, allowing homebrew developers the chance to finish off and release some of the unfinished games that never made it to production. One of the latest titles to be commercially released for the Atari Lynx was Cyber Virus, published by Songbird Productions in 2002. Handy is an open source Lynx emulator that makes it possible to play most of the system’s catalog on a Windows PC. To really get an authentic experience, however, we suggest emulating the Atari Lynx on your PSP with the help of Plynx, a port of the Gamepark GP32 Atari emulator. For the truly hardcore, of course, nothing compares to playing games on the original handheld. Working Atari Lynx systems can still be found in certain shops, although they are becoming more and more rare.

Technical Specifications:

MAIN CPU: MOS 6502 (Same family of chip used in the Famicom and Atari 2600) 8-bit CPU, 16-bit address space

CLOCKSPEED: Up to 4MHz (~3.6MHz average)

SOUND: 4 Channels

GRAPHICS CPU: Codemnamed “Suzy” (16-bit custom CMOS chip running at 16MHz) Allowed hardware sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects.

PALETTE: 4096 color (12-bit) palette allowing 16 simultaneous colors per scanline (more than 16 colors could be displayed by changing palettes after each scanline)

CONNECTIVITY: Multiplayer over ComLynx cable for up to 17 players

MEDIA: Cartridge-based ROM with up to 2 MB storage (although only 3 games used as much as 512k, most games were 256k)

SCREEN SIZE: 3.5″ diagonal (approximately 3.25″ x 1.88″)

Game Screenshots:

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