Lost Lynx Games

[TrekMD]

Dogs, monkeys, and cats!  Oh my!  That does look like it would work well on the Lynx.

[TL]

Dogs, monkeys, and cats!  Oh my!

There is Hot Dog too!

[onthinice]

Not all lost games but 1991 looked like a good year for the Lynx.

[TrekMD]

Several lost games in there.  Certainly a good year for the Lynx.  It would have been even better had Rolling Thunder, Vindicators, Geo Duel, and 720 seen release. 

[onthinice]

Another announcement for Geo Duel.

[TL]

That first lot of scans there is great Ice! I don't have those either so they will be added to the archive! 

I love the screenshot for an early version of Awesome Golf that looks a bit different and the screenshots of Turbo Sub where they were still using a 3rd person perspective before they changed it.

[onthinice]

Great! Glad I could help

[Rogue Trooper]

Just been reading through old issue of Atari Entertainment Magazine (fanzine) in their Top 5 Lynx games feature, the 2nd game they looked at was Dracula, they talk about games development history (and point out Handmade Software's Jim Gregory had been big contributer to both A.E.M and it's earlier self, Lynx User, over the years), they say it was H.M.S that pitched the idea of a Dracula game to Atari, around 12 months before release of the Francis Ford Coppola movie, Atari not being able to afford the film licensce, got around this by adapting the Bram Stroker book into a game.

4 months prior to film being released, Atari panicked, wanted game out same time as film, but game was 12 months away from completition, so H.M.S were told to just finish off what they had so far+ship it too Atari USA for production+Beta testing etc.

Because of uneasy realationship between Atari+distributors in UK, orders for copies of the game were said to only be in the 100's, not thousands, with rumour that main distributor for Lynx games in UK, only ordering 12 copies!.

Game said to go on to sell close to 10,000 copies in UK alone, Atari putting 2nd production run of carts etc to meet demand...


Article said months after game was released, rumours started about missing code/parts of the game, with atari even making offical statement promising to release a sequel with all the missing code, but nothing ever heard of it again.

Throwing this own to our resident Atari experts.

Anything you can shed light on here?.

[TL]

Different to the story I know.

Atari acquired the book license because they were out bid on the movie license by Sony and also got the rights to use a likeness of both Bram Stoker and Christopher Lee. Handmade Software produced the game but it ended up being a massive 512k in size and used battery back-up to save. Jack Tramiel in his infinite wisdom decided that this would make it too expensive to produce and demanded that Handmade cut it back to fit on a 256k (2 megabit) game card instead (this was the same reason Eye Of The Beholder was never released).

I actually know somebody who owns a prototype of the full 512k version and has been saying he would release it for years but still no sign.

Here are a couple of screenshots from Dracula 512k (parts that are not in the released game):

   

[Rogue Trooper]

Did mention A.E.M's 'accuracy' in the Jaguar thread with regards to Quake, hence throwing it up on here to see what other versions of events exist. :-).

Wondered as they did say Handmade had been regular helper with the 2 magazines.

Anyone else got a 3rd version of events? lol.


Future RG article in making there Laird if ever i did.

[TL]

Well the person I know (who owns the game) worked at Atari, so I know who I believe!

[Rogue Trooper]

Well the person I know (who owns the game) worked at Atari, so I know who I believe!

Don't get Johny Mutant started on Edwins claims, that poor sod waited ages for a meeting with Edwin at a train station, edwin never showed up or explained where the hell he was/what happened.

 

[onthinice]

A follow-up advertisement to Laird's. Someone at Color Dreams must have been serious about trying to release these games.

Order Today

[TrekMD]

I'd heard about Hellraiser for the Lynx but not those other titles. 

[Rogue Trooper]

Few others i'd seen mentioned with release dates:

Jimmy Whites Snooker due Feb'94

Ren+Stimpy comming from Acclaim in '93

Space Combat (working title) from Atari, early '94 (mix of trading and dog fighting in space, said to feature advanced 3D polygon visuals).

Shadowsoft (who did Lynx Joust) rumoured to be converting Smash TV to Lynx.