Long story short, Evercade released an announcement today that they're bringing an Atari Lynx compilation to their handheld. The Twitter announcement is full of enthusiasm as well. Growing up, I only had the Game Boy series of systems and played on my friend's Game Gear a few times. I don't remember ever even seeing a Lynx. So I was intrigued a bit and looked up some of the games and they don't strike me as anything too special, other than the fact that outside emulation, there's pretty much zero opportunity to play these games on modern systems. Am I missing something? Besides the delightful irony that both the original Lynx and the Evercade have about a five hour battery life.
Dunno, I think the only thing that excites me about this is, if they're gonna have a Lynx compilation, maybe there's a chance to see games from the Sega Game Gear or Neo Geo Pocket Color to the system. Those I'd definitely be interested in.
A friend of mine had one when we were in elementary school, and I remember thinking it was pretty neat at the time. Looking at the games library, Turbo Sub is the only one I can actually remember, and I recall it being fun. But bear in mind that I was like 6 when the Lynx came out, although I don't recall exactly when I actually got to use one. I also hadn't really had much experience with handhelds, and compared to the home consoles of the time (the Atari 7800 and the NES), it wasn't too far off graphically. That said, I expect there's a reason it's not remembered as fondly as the Game Boy, even if it's just the fairly small library.
To this day, I'm amazed at how such a limited system like the Game Boy was able to have so many amazing games (though it had its fair share of duds too). It's a testament to the ingenuity of game deaigners and programmers.That said, I expect there's a reason it's not remembered as fondly as the Game Boy, even if it's just the fairly small library.
Can't imagine why a handheld, 16-bit, CFL backlit console from the late '80s would be a battery hog. ;) I'm no game historian, but I figure after both the 5200 and the 7800 struggled so much, developers probably soured on working with Atari, which might be a partial explanation for the lack of titles. Though it didn't look completely barren.
I have never seen an Atari Lynx outside of a Sears Wishbook. Nintendo? Obviously. Sega? Equally so. The Turbographix 16 was even well-regarded at the time, and when the Atari Jaguar came out it was generally regarded as too little too late and wasn't that a shame because the graphics were pretty dope. But I don't recall any awareness whatsoever around the Lynx.
Yeah, the fact that I've had hands on experience (thanks to a network of friends who everyone owned something) with pretty much every system from that era except the Lynx, kind of says it must not have been too common. Poor battery aside, I can kind of see why. The games look colorful, but from some videos I've seen the frame rates look really chopy and the graphics look more on par with what you'd find on an Amiga or DOS computer, which back then, such graphics look really out of place on a console, even a handheld one.