Atari Lynx

Although Atari worked on a number of handheld consoles, the Atari Lynx was the only unit they ever released. The console was the first handheld portable gaming system to feature a colour LCD display, and was also notable for its advanced graphics, ambidextrous layout and other forward-looking features, such as backlit display and the ability to network with up to 17 other units.

Released in 1989, the unit was also the first to feature hardware support for zooming and distortion of sprites, which resulted in fast pseudo-3D games with unrivalled quality for the time. Although it was originally planned that the games would be loaded from tape, the final design used a ROM cartridge instead. However, as game data needed be copied from ROM to RAM before it could be used, less memory was available and the games loaded slower than necessary.

The Atari Lynx was launched at a similar time to the Nintendo Game Boy; although this unit was less than half the price of the Lynx and did not feature colour or custom chips, the Nintendo system had attracted full support from game developers and so had an impressive library of games, including the hugely popular Tetris. A number of other factors also overshadowed the success of the unit:

• The Lynx needed 6 batteries compared to the 4 in the original Game Boy. The more powerful CPU of the Lynx and its backlit screen also meant that a set of batteries drained in less than 4 hours.
• The original Lynx was physically large and bulky, and users could not carry the unit around in a pocket, as they could with a Game Boy.

The Game Boy went on to dominate the market, despite a re-launch of a newer, sleeker Atari (the Lynx II) in 1991. This re-modelled version featured a clearer backlit colour screen, rubber hand grips, stereo headphone jack and a power save option. At the same time, Sega released its Game Gear handheld colour console, and although it was more expensive, bulky and power thirsty than the Lynx, offered a large library of popular titles, and soon overtook the Lynx to claim second place of the market share.

In 1994, Atari dropped the Lynx to refocus its efforts on its Jaguar console. However, the console has maintained a group of loyal fans, who still create and sell games for the system. In addition, an emulator known as Handy was released in 2000to play Lynx games on PCs.

Specifications

Processor

• 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 colour (12-bit) palette
    • 16 simultaneous colours (4 bits) from palette per scanline (more than 16 colours 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 62500Bd)
  ...