Best Atari Lynx games!

[skeezix]

How did we miss this when spamming these threads?


Please post your favourite Lynx games here, so we can add the thread to bosbeetles collection thread


And for the record, I was the Atari 'salesman' (I was young, saleskid maybe?) in the local computer store whereI grew up; I was (obviously) the Atari ST guy, and also selling the Lynx


In truth, despite having worked on Handy back in the day and porting it a few times, I never played Lynx too much; mostly the games I sold at the store, for old times sake.


- California Games -- really pretty good; the bike course and surfing subgames are burned into my memory


- Electrocop -- s'okay side scrolling shooter.


- Gauntlet -- a slightly RPG-ified Gauntlet game; not bad.


- Chips Challenge - a _classic_ puzzler, not to be missed!


- Road Blasters, Off Road, Ms Pacman, Xeonophone -- all very good arcade conversions.


Sorry, in a rush, but open the floodgates! Release the kraken!


jefftired

 

[Blue Protoman]

I heard Checkered Flag and STUN Runner are pretty good.

 

[Esn]

My favourites, roughly in order:


S.T.U.N. Runner (great racing game, good substitute for the original Arcade version)


Lemmings (looks like original, but a little different from other versions)


Rygar (neat platform game)


Klax (addictive puzzler)


Chip's Challenge (another great puzzler, though very hard)


Xybots (quite a funny FPS-like game, though actually second-person)

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

hmm i remember seeing a californa games lynx pack in a shop when i was a kid.never played one though.have heard it was a good machine though.

 

[Anihil8ion2199]

Rygar and S.T.U.N Racer were good... Battery life was God awful! Unit was big, heavy, and not as easy to get games for as a gameboy,..

 

[Alpha2]

By the time this thread peters out I'd be willing to say most every lynx game may end up on this list... except maybe for Bram Stroker's Dracula(grrr).


California Games - I spent a lot of time on the bmx downhill.


Electrocop - Still haven't beaten it (or did I? I ran around those halls so much I can't remember).


Blue Lightning - the lynx's answer to Afterburner.

 

[Tickles]

Rygar and S.T.U.N Racer were good... Battery life was God awful! Unit was big, heavy, and not as easy to get games for as a gameboy,..

But it was 16-Bit, which at the time made it awesome :lol: I really wanted one of these (the original design, if I could choose) but never did get one. I played on a friend's a few years later, really liked California Games and Chip's Challenge.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

bizarrely shadow of the beast was on it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/nL2iXkT9yVY?feature=oembed

 

[CapcomSuicide]

Dont forget the superb side scrolling shooter Gates of Zendocon and the brilliant top down shooter Zalor Mercenary

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Rampart - brilliant conversion - better than the arcade version.


Lemmings - perfect conversion of the Amiga version (minus the particle effects)


Joust - another great conversion...


Pacland - and another one!


Scrapyard Dog - not sure why I like it, I just do...


Xenophobe - great humour...


Alpine Games - shows what could have been achieved on the Lynx if development had continued...

 

[NiGame]

Surprised no one mentioned Todd's Adventures in Slime World.

 

[lordbobjones]

Loved the lynx. I still have mine somewhere. The games were great and had a good variety. I still have an unreleased game AVP somewhere. It is not finished but is kind of fun to try it out.


Good times. I am looking forward to reliving the old days. Cyberball took many hours of my life along with Raiden and Zylar!

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Surprised no one mentioned Todd's Adventures in Slime World.

Yes - that was good. I loved the way you could play it in different ways...

 

[P1r]

Zarlor Mercenary - only the best shoot'em'up ever

 

[superatarian]

I have three Lynx's, one of which is the original version released in


the early 90's. Great gaming machine. Of the 50+ games I have, I played


Gates of Z. the most.

 

[dewc]

I liked Klax and Blockout. Both great puzzle games.

 

[Halcyon]

I found one at a second hand store last year only had 3 games and I guess i would recommend them all!


Chips Challenge All ready mentioned


California Games, I guess i like it I just find it way hard and a little too simplistic but great graphic.


Crystal Mines II Like chips challange in some way except there are not as many puzzles and you get a gun


Oh hey for what ever this is worth,


If you go to Radio shack you can power up the LYNX ver 2 with a 9V 300mA power supply with a "H" type adapter. Also this is the same power supply used for the Sega Gamegear you just need a "C" type adapter. The whole thing costs about $30 not sure if Radio shack is a US company only but for the yankees hopefully that helps save some batteries!

 

[CAZMIESTER]

Rygar and S.T.U.N Racer were good... Battery life was God awful! Unit was big, heavy, and not as easy to get games for as a gameboy,..

But it was 16-Bit, which at the time made it awesome :lol: I really wanted one of these (the original design, if I could choose) but never did get one. I played on a friend's a few years later, really liked California Games and Chip's Challenge.

Actually it was a pc engine configuration 8bit main cpu 16 bit graphic+math co processor


here are the specs


MOS 65SC02 processor running at up to 4 MHz (~3.6 MHz average)


8-bit CPU, 16-bit address space


Sound engine


4 channel sound (Lynx II with panning)


8-bit DAC for each channel (4 channels × 8-bits/channel = 32 bits commonly quoted)


Video DMA driver for liquid-crystal display


4,096 color (12-bit) palette


16 simultaneous colors (4 bits) from palette per scanline (more than 16 colors can be displayed by changing palettes after each scanline)


8 System timers (2 reserved for LCD timing, one for UART)


Interrupt controller


UART (for ComLynx) (fixed format 8E1, up to 62500 Bd)


512 bytes of bootstrap and game-card loading ROM


Suzy (16-bit custom CMOS chip running at 16 MHz)


Graphics engine


Hardware drawing support


Unlimited number of high-speed sprites with collision detection


Hardware high-speed sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects


Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data


Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling


Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second)


160 × 102 standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels)


Math co-processor


Hardware 16-bit × 16-bit → 32-bit multiply with optional accumulation; 32-bit ÷ 16-bit → 16-bit divide


Parallel processing of CPU and a single multiply or a divide instruction


RAM: 64 KB 120ns DRAM


Storage: Cartridge - 128, 256 and 512 KB exist, up to 2 MB is possible with bank-switching logic.


Some (homebrew) carts with EEPROM to save hi-scores.


Ports:


Headphone port (3.5 mm stereo; wired for mono on the original Lynx)


ComLynx (multiple unit communications, serial)


LCD Screen: 3.5" diagonal


Battery holder (six AA) ~4–5 hours (Lynx I) ~5-6 hours


Pretty dire system owned one you were luck to get two hours battery life and the resolution at that time was really bad.

 

[CFWhitman]

I'll just list a few Lynx games worth playing that haven't been mentioned:


Desert Strike - This is sort of an isometric take on Choplifter.


Dinolymics - A puzzle game along the lines of Lemmings. It's the same game as Dino Dudes for the Jaguar, but with different levels.


Hydra - This is pretty much just like the arcade version of Hydra, except of course for the resolution .


Steel Talons - This is a helicopter combat game with untextured polygon graphics. I seem to remember having fun with it.


Toki - This is pretty much a perfect arcade translation, allowing for the limits of the system (mostly resolution). Edit: For those unfamiliar, this is a very good jump and shoot (well, spit) platform game. Of course you have the option of playing the arcade version on Mame4All. The Lynx version of the game has limited continues, so it ends up being a bit harder.


Warbirds - A biplane combat simulator. It's quite well done.


I'd also like to mention that Viking Child is a platformer that's oddly slow, but decently fun if you can put up with that. Also, despite Alpha2's comment above, I found Dracula the Undead (basically a point and click adventure) to be interesting enough to play through. It was supposed to have three chapters, however, for some reason (I don't know if it was technical, financial, or other), an ending was slapped onto the first chapter, and the game was released like that, so it's kind of short. Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom would be good except for two things: (1) The buttons for jump and slash are the reverse of what they should be (you can compensate for that with an emulator). (2) The graphics were never really translated to the low resolution screen of the Lynx, but just interpolated down. That makes the game look fairly bad and the weapon powerups hard to discriminate between.