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The Atari Lynx

zapiy · 2011-01-24T19:52:18Z

Released by Atari in 1989 the Lynx was actually designed by well known software publishers Epyx and designed by many of the same team as the Atari 8-bit computers and the Commodore Amiga. It cost a massive (back then) £179.99 with California Games free which was double the price of its only competitor, the Nintendo Gameboy. It was criticised for its large size, 12 inches long, but praised for its superb colour screen and excellent speaker. The funniest thing is that when Atari ran a focus group on the machine before its release the majority of people favoured the large size as they felt they were getting more for their money! Within a year the price dropped to £129.99 and not long after that the smaller more compact Lynx II was introduced to the market with a retail price of £89.99 without a game. The new model offered stereo sound, rubber handgrips, a better placed card slot (back instead of side), longer battery life and a backlight switch to save power when the machine was paused. While often considered a failure by many the Lynx managed to sell close to 5 million units worldwide and did especially well in parts of Europe like the UK, Netherlands and France. It's commercial life ended in 1995 as Atari dropped all support to try and bolster its failing Jaguar console. Due to its hardcore following the machine continued to be supported by Telegames for a further few years and is still being supported by Songbird Productions as well as a number of independent homebrew coders. The biggest downfall of the Lynx was its lack of game releases but it does feature some of the best arcade conversions available on any console and the best good to bad ratio of any console too. The Lynx hardware was so good that it remained the most powerful handheld on the market from its 1989 debut up until the release of the Gameboy Advance a full 13 years later! While it used a custom version of the 8-bit 6502 CPU (same as the NES, C64 and PC Engine) running at 4mhz it also featured the following custom chips / abilities: - A 16-bit blitter chip to speed up math calculations. - A 4-Channel DAC stereo sound chip called "Mikey" which allowed sampled sound to played on any channel. - 4096 colours of which 16 could be displayed per scanline with a resolution of 160 x 102 - 64k of RAM with game cards that went up to 512k in ROM size (2 meg is possible) - The graphics chip "Suzy" was also capable of infinate hardware sprites, hardware scaling, rotation, panning, distortion, hardware scrolling and a frame rate of up to 75 fps. I have both versions.. Must say i prefer the 1st version even though its bigger. So there are still new games being made and sold?

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onthinice

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Any time frame?

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Posted : 22/03/2013 4:16 pm

(@_tl_)

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Any time frame?

Nope, 108 Stars (who is a member here) is helping him with the graphics

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Posted : 22/03/2013 4:25 pm

Shadowrunner

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Now that's impressive!Â

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Posted : 22/03/2013 5:07 pm

onthinice

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I know it is asking too much, but if they could give you the original as a bonus that would be the icing on the cake :4:

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Posted : 22/03/2013 6:23 pm

zapiy

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Bloody awesome news. :4:

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Topic starter Posted : 22/03/2013 6:30 pm

AmigaJay

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That's very good, nice graphics on the gun and hand, though shame it's not full screen, one to keep an eye on.

Old School Gamer Since 1982 - Creator of various gaming websites and blogs 1998-2018

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Posted : 22/03/2013 7:02 pm

(@_tl_)

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A couple of screenshots for you too:

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Posted : 22/03/2013 7:06 pm

Rogue Trooper

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Impressed! but bit hard to make out just what your shooting at, plus no audio as of yet? wonder if performance can be maintained for final product.

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Posted : 22/03/2013 7:16 pm

zapiy

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Nice one cheers.

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Topic starter Posted : 22/03/2013 7:17 pm

TrekMD

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Wolfenstein on the Lynx is looking prime!Â

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Posted : 27/03/2013 1:15 am

(@_tl_)

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I have been playing my way through loads of interesting Lynx demos tonight . . . .

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Posted : 30/03/2013 12:11 am

TrekMD

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Those all look pretty good.Â How far into development are these?

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Posted : 30/03/2013 2:52 am

(@_tl_)

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Most of them are incredibly simple and pretty much just one screen.

Para Lemi (4th game) is kind of playable but a long way off being finished.

Marble Madness is actually very playable, it just lacks sound and a bit of polish.

Dungeon is fun to play around with, it's just a graphics demo really.

There is some more stuff too, I can send you the whole Zip file if you likeÂ

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Posted : 30/03/2013 3:07 am

TrekMD

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There is some more stuff too, I can send you the whole Zip file if you likeÂ

That'd be cool!Â Thanks!

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Posted : 30/03/2013 3:08 am

dougtitchmarsh

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Look good Laird, good to see the Lynx still getting some love with new projects.

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Posted : 30/03/2013 10:02 am

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