While today's portable gamer has their choice of multiple models of DS, PSP or iPod Touch, there was a time when portable gaming was defined by Nintendo's Game & Watch series (and its imitators) and not a whole lot else. They were certainly portable, but with a single game in each, variety wasn't a highlight.
Then Nintendo released the original, monochromatic Game Boy, which pretty much locked them into the number one spot on the portable gaming charts, a position the company has aggressively held ever since. The original Game Boy was a technologically limited system compared to its immediate contemporary however: The Atari Lynx
Key Stats:
Was the Lynx developed by the same people who did the Atari 2600?
Nope, not at all. It was originally developed as the "Handy Game" by Epyx, who you may remember more closely for games like Impossible Mission or the Winter/Summer/California Games series. Epyx lacked the cash necessary to bring the Handy to market, and also owed Atari quite a bit of money, leading to the Handy Game becoming the Atari Lynx.
 |
The original Lynx. As you can see from the screen, it's a bad idea to let a three year old near it unless you like scratches. [Photos, Alex Kidman]
|
What were its core technical specifications?
The Lynx ran on a MOS 65SC02 processor at 4Hz, running a 3.5" 4096 colour LCD screen, with a custom graphics chip, known as "Suzy" which allowed for sprite scaling and distortion - well before Nintendo did so in the SNES - at a standard resolution of 160x102 pixels.
 |
The Lynx had a custom graphics chip, known as "Suzy" which allowed for sprite scaling and distortion - well before Nintendo did so in the SNES [Photos, Alex Kidman]
|
That might not sound like all that much, but bear in mind the immediate competition from Nintendo's Gameboy ran a 2-bit display screen that could only show up four different shades of grey.
Games - 99 of which were originally developed, although not all of them saw retail release - were supplied on thin card-style cartridges with a prominent edge that was designed to make them easier to remove from the Lynx.
 |
| The screen on our original model Lynx was held on with tape. We'd never opened it before, so presumably it came from the factory that way. |
Why did the Gameboy prosper and the Lynx die?
Partly software - Nintendo had a large developer following and critically Tetris as a pack-in game with the Gameboy - and partly a much higher asking price for the Lynx. Arguably, the nail in the coffin for the Lynx was power. The Lynx had power to spare when it came to flinging sprites around the screen, leading to some impressive looking games, but all that power came at a significant price. The Lynx could suck through a set of six AA batteries in just a few hours, where as a set of four AAs could last weeks in a Gameboy.
 |
Desert Strike, Xenophobe - this is roughly a quarter of all the titles ever released for the Lynx. [Photos, Alex Kidman]
|
Why was it relevant?
The Lynx represented a number of firsts in the console gaming world. It was the first colour portable, as well as the first portable system to have a significant redesign in the form of the Lynx 2, a smaller unit that also incorporated a stereo speaker. It allowed for (theoretically) up to eighteen players to link up their Lynxes via the "Comlynx" port for multiplayer games, although finding eighteen Lynx owners may have been a near impossible task.
It's also the only portable console we're aware of that had a specific inbuilt feature for left-handed players. A dedicated "flip" button on the Lynx and Lynx 2 allowed southpaws to flip the screen and thus hold the Lynx more comfortably.
As we discovered while trying to revive one of the units for this feature, the original Lynx is also the only console we've ever seen with internal parts held together with masking tape. Amazingly, 21 years after it was launched, the masking tape was still holding!
What's it worth?
Lynx consoles have a small but keen fanbase, but the systems themselves typically sell for around $30 online, depending on which model is offered.
