Video Game Collecting

I can’t begin to describe how excited I am to be re-united with an Atari Lynx.  Most people never heard of this gem, and depending on who you talk to some would say the world is better that way.  And that’s a shame.  The Lynx was revolutionary at the time but limited support pretty much killed it.  When it was available I only knew of two stores that carried it: Montgomery Wards, and Toy’s ‘R’ Us.  I got mine from Toy’s ‘R’ Us along with Rampage and A.P.B.  Since games were sparce and so few stores carried them to begin with I ended up trading mine for a SEGA Master System.  Clearly I had brain damage at the time.

Two versions were released, the one shown here is the original launch system just like I had.  The revision was a little bit smaller with a few other improvements but obviously not enough to keep it from being forgotten.

The revolutionary aspects of the system are obvious.  It had a color screen.  It was the first, although SEGA Game Gear often gets the credit.  It’s funny to look back on this and think how far we’ve come.  Everything now has a colored screen.  Cell phones, XM Radio Displays, etc.  Certainly the technology has gotten less expensive and easier to manufacture, but for a company to have the guts to try and turn a profit on a colored LCD backlit screen is pretty gutsy.

The flash of the camera distorts the color of the system.  It’s a darker grey than what it appears to be here.  Note the two sets of buttons on the right.  The system can be flipped around for left handed players.  Some games required the unit to be held vertically so as to take advantage of a vertical play-field (Like Klax).

The system did look like a bloated monstrosity compared to the original Gameboy and the SP shown here for reference.

Taking a photo of a game in action is a near impossibility.  I’m not sure if it’s the back light or the pixel’s themselves, or even the refresh rate but digital cameras don’t play nice with the screen.

But here is where things get very interesting.  The screen of the Atari Lynx was much bigger than the Gameboy’s.  Almost 1 and 1/2 times bigger.  But the resolution was smaller.  It had the same width and almost 2/3rd’s the same height!  So the sprites and objects on the screen where certainly bigger… but also more blocky!  This would require some interesting talent from the programmers which we’ll see why in a moment.  But below is a resolution (not screen size) comparison of the original GameBoy, the Atari Lynx and the GameBoy SP:

So with such a tiny canvas to work with, anyone developing for the Lynx would have an enormous challenge ahead of them.  Take for example Double Dragon.  The Atari Lynx version features spot on graphics.  They look very close to the arcade version, but when you compare two screen shots with the same resolution look what happens:

Atari Lynx version of Double Dragon:

The Arcade version of Double Dragon:

The Lynx version is a postage stamp sized ‘sample’ of the play field from the original game!  Rygar also suffered in this regard:

But all in all, the Lynx is still a neat system with several unique games that were never available on any of the mainstream systems until emulation became available (APB for example).