Lynx Games #2

Gauntlet: The Third Encounter (1990)
By: Atari Genre: Maze / Run 'n' Gun Players: 1-4 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Atari Lynx First Day Score: 44,816
Also Available For: Nothing

When I was younger I loved the two Gauntlet games. I had them on a compilation (I forget which now) for my Speccy, and my local arcade had the full-on four-player version of the first game there for years, so I had lots of opportunities to do my Gauntleting. They were very high-profile games too, but it wasn't until years later I realised... where the hell was Gauntlet 3? Well, as it turned out, there were two different takes on a third game in the series and neither was anywhere near as high-profile as the first two. One was made by Software Creations for the 8 & 16-bit home micros and was not very Gauntlet-ish. The other was developed by Epyx and released only on the handheld console they developed - the Lynx. Would it prove to be any more Gauntlety than the weird home micro offering? Yes it would, as it turns out, but it's still far from a typical Gauntlet game.

Atari Lynx A-Z

Developed years earlier by former Amiga designers who by then worked for American developer Epyx, the 16-bit Lynx was much more powerful than Nintendo's Game Boy, but that extra power and its colour screen came at a cost. It has some corking games though, and this listing will include all official releases. This is one of four parts and features all games beginning with letters O through R:

Pac-Land by Atari (1991)

Namco's pill-popping yellow pie-chart has received many sequels to his 1980 classic, and this is probably the best-loved of them all. Giving him arms and legs (and a hat) was a no-brainer and the platformer that he was given to run and jump through was a cracker. Happily, this Lynx version is nearly as good too.

Early Driving Games #13

Checkered Flag (1991)
By: Atari Corporation Genre: Driving Players: 1-6 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Atari Lynx
Also Available For: Jaguar

Most attempts at driving games on the pre-CD-based consoles were a bit hit and miss in terms of quality, and you might think that would apply even more to the handhelds, what with their small screens and modest tech-specs, but if one of them could produce a genuinely playable example, it must surely be the Lynx. It was capable of some rather fantastic sprite-scaling after all, which, in the right hands, could result in some impressive pseudo-3D graphics not dissimilar to the SNES's celebrated Mode 7. Of course, though important in this genre, decent visuals aren't everything either. I was more interested to see if there was actually a decent game underneath them, and soon after first trying the game, it seemed as though there was.

Lynx Round-Up #1

Not long ago I spent a good while playing many arcade conversions on Atari's bulky handheld which culminated in a list of what I felt were the best ones - the Top Five Lynx Arcade Conversions. However, if there's any system that's famous for how much of its back-catalogue is made up of games of this type it's the Lynx, and, as I learned, there are more than just five good ones! To that end, here's a random selection of five more including, I hope, some corkers:

APB (1990)

This overhead cops 'n' robbers game was was an eye-catching and intriguing title in its day which saw you, as 'Officer Bob', charged with taking down a set quota of wrongdoers per stage. There were a few conversions (including an excellent Speccy effort) but, like most Atari coin-ops of the day it also saw a release on the Lynx where, to my surprise, its vertical view is not used. This means the action is confined to barely two thirds of a horizontally-viewed game area and accordingly things are quite a bit slower than the nippy arcade game and feature less-complex stages as well, but that doesn't mean it's any easier! Indeed, you're not playing a rogue cop so anything you do remotely wrong earns you a 'demerit', and enough of these can swiftly result in you being fired and therefore game over. APB is tough and can often be frustrating, but it's a decent conversion all things considered, and also proves to be a fairly original and rather addictive overhead racer... 7/10

Bat 'n' Ball Games #6

Robo-Squash (1990)
By: Atari Genre: Bat 'n' Ball Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Atari Lynx First Day Score: 16,200
Also Available For: Nothing

Considering the genre was one of the first ones ever created, there's been surprisingly few innovations in the world of bat 'n' ball games, but Atari, the very creators in question, tried doing just that with this slightly obscure release for their own Lynx 'handheld' (snigger). The objective does not, however, include the usual block-hitting tomfoolery that I had initially believed formed the basis of the game. Robo Squash is instead a tarted-up version of the very first bat 'n' ball game of them all, and indeed the very first popular video game full stop - Pong! Instead of the simple left-to-right-to-left-again gameplay of the original though, this example asks you to do the same thing but from an into-the-screen perspective! There's a bit more to it than that though, of course.

Top Five Lynx Arcade Conversions

Despite being hailed by its fans as the most underrated hand held ever, Atari's poor old Lynx was pretty much a flop from start to finish. It was a mighty powerful machine for its time, perhaps too powerful, as it sadly crippled the machine with a bulky size and woeful battery life. Due to this, few developers other than Epyx (the original designers of the machine) and Atari themselves actually released games for it, and what this means is that a large percentage of its back-catalogue is made up of arcade conversions. Thanks to that aforementioned power it managed most of them admirably though, and here are the very best ones:

5. Roadblasters (1990)

To be honest, I've never been hugely keen on this game. The version I've played the most is the monochrome version on the Speccy which is decent but too easy, but fan or not, this Lynx version is a pretty impressive effort. Like the arcade version and unlike the Speccy one, it's not particularly easy, partly because the car controls in the same slightly annoying way and I consequently didn't make it very far (and had little desire to try due to the aforementioned mild dislikeness I still harbour). The gameplay has been well duplicated though, and the graphics are superb - very colourful and fairly fast, although the scaling looks a but iffy on the Lynx's screen. So, great job on the conversion, less so on the game itself...

Lynx Games #1

Electrocop (1989)
By: Epyx / Atari Genre: Maze / Run 'n' Gun Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Atari Lynx First Day Score: 15,475
Also Available For: Nothing

Atari's mighty Lynx was a funny machine. It was a 'handheld' which was rather too big to be comfortably used as one for starters, but it was a powerful piece of kit for sure. It soon gained a glowing reputation for the surprisingly faithful arcade conversions which formed the bulk of its software library, but there were a few original releases too. Many of them were by Epyx, the co-developer of the Lynx itself, and most of these appeared at or soon after the machine's launch - presumably they were developed especially for the occasion to give the system a slightly more varied line-up. One of these was Electrocop. It gained a decent reputation at the time but it never seems to get mentioned these days any time the Lynx is mentioned. Has it dated that badly or has it been unfairly neglected in the intervening years?

Gaming Memories - Part 8

I know this series of features here at Red Parsley is entitled 'Gaming Memories' but I'm really struggling to remember when, why, or even how I obtained my Atari Lynx, but own one I did. This last part is especially confusing as I'm sure I was at college at the time which means I had no money to speak of. I seem to have a vague recollection of receiving the sizeable console in the post though, which suggests I conned/nagged my mum into ordering it from her catalogue. That takes care of the 'how', albeit rather inconclusively. That also helps me place the time of the purchase somewhere in the early 90's which is further verified by my certainty that it was the original and larger version of the Lynx that I owned to start with. So, that just leaves the 'why'. What is it that made me so desire this new handheld so much?

I suppose that decision was probably reached in the same way as many other decisions of my earlier and far less responsible years, which usually had something to do with the tantalising coverage and images in the magazines of the day. Atari's name still carried a little weight in those days and news of their first foray into the world of the handheld console, a market newly revealed and duly exploited by Nintendo, was met with a great deal of interest from press and gamers alike. However, Nintendo's marvellous little machines truly was a handheld whilst the beefy Lynx, originally conceived and developed by American software house, Epyx, before being sold to Atari, was much larger, heavier, and had a crippling power-usage (six 'AA' batteries would last around two or three hours!). As a result, for me as well as probably most other Lynx owners, it was almost exclusively a machine to use at home with the mains adaptor or take to friends houses to be used with a similar power source. Unless your dad worked for Duracell or something of course. Mine didn't, and I soon discovered how much of a hindrance this would be.