Atari Lynx

• • Manufacturer: Atari Corporation

• Designer: Epyx

• Generation: fourth generation

• Bits: 16 bit

  • Year Released: 1989

• Units sold: less than 500,000

• Media: cartridge

• Summary: First hand held console device with a color LCD screen. Originally designed and developed by Epyx but was moved over to Atari with epyx handling software.

History

The Lynx was the second handheld game with the Atari name to actually be produced, the first was Atari Inc.'s handheld electronic game Touch Me. Atari Inc. had previously worked on several other handheld projects including the Breakout, Space Invaders, and the Atari Cosmos portable/tabletop console. However, those projects were shut down during development - some just short of their intended commercial release.

The Lynx system was originally developed by Epyx as the Handy Game. Planning and design of the console began in 1986 and completed in 1987.^[1] Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1989. Facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought out partners. Atari Corp. and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari Corp. would handle production and marketing, while Epyx would handle software development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx

he Lynx was originally conceived by engineers at Epyx in 1987, where it was called the Handy. Dave Needle and R.J. Mical, two of the Handy's creators, were also members of the original Amiga design team. Epyx first showed the system to industry insiders at the Winter CES in January of 1989, and the audience was impressed. However, Epyx ran into financial problems and it became apparent that they would not be able to produce the Handy on their own. They needed to find a partner, and sent out invitations to several potential candidates. One of the invitees was Nintendo, who passed on the project. Another invitee was Atari, who was eager to reassert their market dominance of the early 80's. Atari and Epyx reached an agreement where Atari would handle the production and marketing of the system, and Epyx would handle the software development. Atari subsequently showed the system off to the press at the Summer 1989 CES with the working title Portable Color Entertainment System. http://www.atariage.com/Lynx/history.html

Hardware

• • 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 62500Bd)

    • 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 x 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

Its "controller" consisted of a directional pad on one side of the screen and 4 buttons on the other side. the buttons were arranged in groups of two; one set on top of the console and one on bottom as displayed in the picture. the whole console was basically a controller with a screen in the center http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx

External Hardware

none

Notable Qualities

This system was the first portable game system ever made with a color screen and was also created for ambidextrous use. The Atari Lynx has several innovative features including its being the first color handheld, with a backlit display, a switchable right-handed/left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with up to 17 other units via its "ComLynx" system (though most games would network eight or fewer players). ComLynx was originally developed to run over infrared links (and was codenamed RedEye).^[4] This was changed to a cable-based networking system before the final release.

The Lynx was also the first gaming console with hardware support for zooming/distortion of sprites, allowing fast pseudo-3D games with unrivaled quality at the time and a capacity for drawing filled polygons with limited CPU intervention. Blue Lightning, an After Burner clone, was especially notable and featured in TV advertising for the console.

The games were originally meant to be loaded from tape, but were later changed to load from ROM. The game data still needed to be copied from ROM to RAM before it could be used, so less memory was available and the games loaded relatively slowly.^{[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx}

Notable Titles

Alien vs Predator, Batman returns, Centipede,Chips Challenge, Demonsgate, Ms. Pacman, Ninja Gaiden are just a few.

References