WIKIBOOKS
DISPONIBILI
?????????

ART
- Great Painters
BUSINESS&LAW
- Accounting
- Fundamentals of Law
- Marketing
- Shorthand
CARS
- Concept Cars
GAMES&SPORT
- Videogames
- The World of Sports

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
- Blogs
- Free Software
- Google
- My Computer

- PHP Language and Applications
- Wikipedia
- Windows Vista

EDUCATION
- Education
LITERATURE
- Masterpieces of English Literature
LINGUISTICS
- American English

- English Dictionaries
- The English Language

MEDICINE
- Medical Emergencies
- The Theory of Memory
MUSIC&DANCE
- The Beatles
- Dances
- Microphones
- Musical Notation
- Music Instruments
SCIENCE
- Batteries
- Nanotechnology
LIFESTYLE
- Cosmetics
- Diets
- Vegetarianism and Veganism
TRADITIONS
- Christmas Traditions
NATURE
- Animals

- Fruits And Vegetables



ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. Action game
  2. Advergaming
  3. Arcade machine
  4. Artificial intelligence
  5. Atari Games
  6. Atari Lynx
  7. Audio game
  8. Board games
  9. Browser game
  10. Casual game
  11. Christian video games
  12. Comparison of handheld gaming consoles
  13. Computer and video games
  14. Computer animation
  15. Computer-assisted role-playing game
  16. Computer graphics
  17. Computer role-playing game
  18. Console game
  19. Dr. Mario
  20. Famicom
  21. First person shooter
  22. Game
  23. Game balance
  24. Game Boy
  25. Game Boy Advance
  26. Game Boy Color
  27. Game Boy line
  28. Game Boy Micro
  29. Game classification
  30. Game controller
  31. Game design
  32. Game designer
  33. Game developer
  34. Game Developer Magazine
  35. Game development
  36. Game development tool
  37. Game mechanic
  38. Gameplay
  39. Game programmer
  40. Game programming
  41. Gamer
  42. Game server browser
  43. Game studies
  44. Gaming convention
  45. Golden Age of Arcade Games
  46. Handheld game console
  47. History of computer and video games
  48. History of video game consoles
  49. History of video games
  50. Hotseat
  51. Internet gaming
  52. Joystick
  53. LAN gaming center
  54. List of books about computer and video games
  55. List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
  56. List of gaming topics
  57. Mobile game
  58. Multiplayer game
  59. N-Gage
  60. Nintendo 64
  61. Nintendo DS
  62. Nintendo GameCube
  63. Personal computer game
  64. Pinball
  65. Play-by-mail game
  66. Play-by-post game
  67. PlayStation 3
  68. PlayStation Portable
  69. Pong
  70. Programming game
  71. Puzzle computer game
  72. Real-time strategy
  73. Sega Dreamcast
  74. Sega Saturn
  75. Serious game
  76. Simulation game
  77. Single player
  78. Sony PlayStation
  79. Stealth-based game
  80. Strategy game
  81. Strategy guide
  82. Super Nintendo Entertainment System
  83. Synthespian
  84. Tabletop role-playing game
  85. Teamspeak
  86. Tetris
  87. Tokyo Game Show
  88. Video game center
  89. Video game console
  90. Video game crash of 1983
  91. Video game industry
  92. Video game publisher
  93. Wargame
  94. Wii
  95. Xbox 360

 



VIDEO & COMPUTER GAMES
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Lynx (console)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Atari Lynx)

The Atari Lynx is Atari's only handheld game console, though its second handheld device released (the first being the handheld electronic game Atari Touch Me). Atari had previously worked on several other handheld projects including the Breakout and Space Invaders handheld electronic games, Atari Cosmos portable/tabletop console, and the Atari Atlantis. However, those projects were shut down during development - some just short of their intended commercial release.

The Lynx has the privilege of being the world's first handheld portable gaming system with a color LCD display. The system is also notable for its forward-looking features, advanced graphics, and ambidextrous layout. The Lynx was released in 1989, the same year as Nintendo's (monochromatic) Game Boy.

However, the Atari Lynx failed to achieve the critical mass required to attract quality third party developers. In contrast, Nintendo's Game Boy had full support from game developers. Today, as with a lot of older consoles, there is still a small group of devoted fans, creating and selling games for the system. An emulator called Handy was released to play Lynx games on PCs in 2000.

Features

The Atari Lynx had several innovative features including it 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).

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 slower than necessary.


 

History

The system was developed by Epyx as the "Handy" and completed in 1987. Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1989. Facing financial problems, Epyx sought out partners. Atari and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari would handle production and marketing, Epyx would handle software development. Atari changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb-stick on the control pad before releasing it as the Lynx two years later, initially retailing in the US at USD $189.95. Atari then showed the Lynx to the press at the Summer 1989 CES.

However, Nintendo's new Game Boy was also introduced at 1989 CES. At $109 it was 58% the price of the Lynx, without the color or custom chips. Nintendo had no problems supplying retailers with the Game Boy for the Christmas season while Atari only managed limited distribution of their Lynx by year's end.

Atari Lynx II
Atari Lynx II

During 1990, the Lynx had moderate sales but Nintendo's Game Boy continued to gain market share. In 1991, Atari relaunched the Lynx with a new marketing campaign, new packaging, slightly improved hardware, and a new sleek look. The new system (referred within Atari as the "Lynx II") featured rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a power save option. It also replaced the monaural headphone jack of the original Lynx with one wired for stereo. The new packaging made available the Lynx without accessories, dropping the price to $99. Although sales improved, Nintendo still dominated the handheld market.

In May 1991, Sega launched its Game Gear portable gaming handheld. Also a color handheld, in comparison to the Lynx it had a higher cost, larger bulk, and lower battery life. However, the Game Gear was backed up by significantly more popular titles and consequently the market became dominated by Nintendo followed by Sega in a distant second and the Lynx in third.

The Lynx was dropped as a product in 1994. As Nintendo's Super Nintendo and Sega's Genesis filled retailer's shelves, Atari refocused its efforts on its Jaguar console.

Drawbacks

Though technologically superior to the Game Boy, a number of factors overshadowed the success of the unit:

  • Nintendo's marketing muscle, domination of 3rd party developers, and quality first party game releases (particularly Tetris), ensured the Game Boy always enjoyed vastly superior software support.
  • Nintendo's clout with retailers gave plenty of shelf space for Game Boy. Atari struggled with getting retailers to sell Lynx.
  • The Lynx needed six batteries versus the four in the original Game Boy. The more powerful CPU of the Lynx, plus its backlit screen, would also drain a set of six AA batteries in less than four hours (five to six hours in the Lynx II).
  • The original Lynx was also physically large and cumbersome. Atari had followed the advice of focus groups who wanted a bigger unit because that gave them "more" for their money 1. While the system is considered comfortable to hold, its portability was limited, and proved to be much harder to carry around then the Game Boy (which easily fit in a large pocket).
  • The Lynx sold at a substantially higher price than the Game Boy, due to the cost of the screen and more elaborate custom chips.
  • The developer's kit for the Lynx was expensive and required an Amiga computer (Atari's own ST computers could not be used). The two creators of the system, RJ Mical and Dave Needle, were also members of the Amiga design team and much to the frustration of Atari, the Amiga was used as the software development platform.

Technical specifications

  • 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: 64Kbyte 120ns DRAM
  • Storage: Cartridge - 128, 256 and 512Kbyte exist, up to 2Mbyte is possible with bank-switching logic.

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

  • Ports:
    • Headphone port (mini-DIN 3.5mm 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

Comparative products

The Sega Game Gear followed a similar formula to the Atari Lynx, and the Game Gear did fare somewhat better due to stronger marketing and better titles. At the same time, the Game Gear was also plagued by similar problems that hurt the Lynx; higher price, shorter battery life, larger size and the Game Boy's dominance of the portable video game market.

Trivia

The Lynx has made at least two appearances in the American TV show Full House. In one episode, Michelle Tanner invites two snobby friends over to play. They sit on her bed and both pull out two Lynx consoles. Michelle asks if she can play, and they tell her she can when she gets her own console. The Lynx II appeared in a later episode, where Gena has a make-out party. Steph's "make-out partner" plays it right before Danny walks in.

See also

  • List of Atari Lynx games
  • Atari 2600
  • Atari 5200
  • Atari Panther
  • Atari Jaguar
  • Atari Jaguar II

External links

  • The Atari Times Lynx Area - Game reviews & features
  • AtariAge – Comprehensive Lynx Rarity Guide and information
  • Atari Lynx - the handheld system that time forgot (with top 10 games list)
  • http://dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Console_Platforms/Atari/
  • Atari Lynx FAQ
  • Information regarding development for the Lynx
  • Atari Lynx Reviewed and EXPOSED!
  • Germany's biggest Atari Fanpage
  • Greece's biggest Atari Lynx Fanpage
  • mirsoft lifespan site
  • Handy Lynx emulator homepage
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28console%29"