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=                             Atari_Lynx                             =
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                            Introduction
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The Atari Lynx is a fourth-generation hand-held game console released
by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in
Europe and Japan. It was the first handheld game console with a color
liquid-crystal display. Powered by a 4 MHz 65C02 8-bit CPU and a
custom 16-bit blitter, the Lynx was more advanced than Nintendo's
monochrome Game Boy, released two months earlier. It also competed
with Sega's Game Gear and NEC's TurboExpress, released the following
year.

The system was developed at Epyx by two former designers of the Amiga
personal computers. The project was called the Handy Game or simply
Handy. In 1991, Atari replaced the Lynx with a smaller model
internally referred to as the Lynx II. Atari published a total of 73
games for the Lynx before it was discontinued in 1995.


                              History
======================================================================
The Lynx system was originally developed by Epyx as the Handy Game. In
1986, two former Amiga designers, RJ Mical and Dave Needle, had been
asked by a former manager at Amiga, Dave Morse, to design a portable
gaming system. Morse now worked at Epyx, a game software company with
a recent string of hit games. Morse's son had asked him if he could
make a portable gaming system, prompting a meeting with Mical and
Needle to discuss the idea. Morse convinced Mical and Needle and they
were hired by Epyx to be a part of the design team. Planning and
design of the console began in 1986 and was completed in 1987. Epyx
first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show
(CES) in January 1989. Facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought
partners. Nintendo, Sega, and other companies declined, but Atari and
Epyx eventually agreed that Atari would handle production and
marketing, and Epyx would handle software development. Epyx declared
bankruptcy by the end of the year, so Atari essentially owned the
entire project. Both Atari and others had to purchase Amigas from
Atari arch-rival Commodore in order to develop Lynx software.

The Handy was designed to run games from the cartridge format, and the
game data must be copied from ROM to RAM before it can be used. Thus,
less RAM is then available and each game's initial loading is slow.
There are trace remnants of a cassette tape interface physically
capable of being programmed to read a tape. Lynx developers have noted
that "there is still reference of the tape and some hardware
addresses" and an updated vintage Epyx manual describes the bare
existence of what could be utilized for tape support. A 2009
retrospective interview with Mical clarifies that there is no truth to
some early reports claiming that games were loaded from tape, and
elaborates, "We did think about hard disk a little."

The networking system was originally developed to run over infrared
links and codenamed RedEye. This was changed to a cable-based
networking system before the final release as the infrared beam was
too easily interrupted when players walked through the beam, according
to Peter Engelbrite. Engelbrite developed the first recordable
eight-player co-op game, and the only eight-player game for the  Lynx,
'Todd's Adventures in Slime World'.

Atari changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb stick on the
control pad. At Summer 1989 CES, Atari's press demonstration included
the "Portable Color Entertainment System", which was changed to "Lynx"
when distributed to resellers, initially retailing in the US at .

Its launch was successful. Atari reported that it had sold 90% of the
50,000 units shipped in the launch month in the U.S. with a limited
launch in New York. US sales in 1990 were approximately 500,000 units
according to the Associated Press. In late 1991, it was reported that
Atari sales estimates were about 800,000, which Atari claimed was
within its expected projections. Lifetime sales by 1995 amount to
fewer than 7 million units when combined with the Game Gear. In
comparison, 16 million Game Boy units were sold by 1995 because of its
superior durability, pricing, battery life, and game library, notably
the pack-in hit 'Tetris'.

As with the console units, the game cartridge design evolved over the
first year of the console's release. The first generation of
cartridges are flat, and designed to be stackable for ease of storage.
However, this design proved to be very difficult to remove from the
console and was replaced by a second design. This style, called
"tabbed" or "ridged", adds two small tabs on the underside to aid in
removal. The original flat style cartridges can be stacked on top of
the newer cartridges, but the newer cartridges can not be easily
stacked on each other, nor were they stored easily. Thus a third
style, the "curved lip" style was produced, and all official and
third-party cartridges during the console's lifespan were released (or
re-released) using this style.

In May 1991, Sega launched its Game Gear portable gaming handheld with
a color screen. In comparison to the Lynx it had shorter battery life
(3-4 hours as opposed to 4-5 for the Lynx), but it is slightly
smaller, has significantly more games, and cost $30 less than the Lynx
at launch.

Retailers such as Game and Toys "R" Us continued to sell the Lynx well
into the mid-1990s on the back of the Atari Jaguar launch, helped by
magazines such as 'Ultimate Future Games' which continued to cover the
Lynx alongside the new generation of 32-bit and 64-bit consoles.


Lynx II
=========
In July 1991, Atari introduced a new version of the Lynx, internally
called the "Lynx II", with a new marketing campaign, new packaging,
slightly improved hardware, better battery life, and a sleeker look.
It has rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a
power save option (which turns off the backlighting). The monaural
headphone jack of the original Lynx was replaced with one wired for
stereo. The Lynx II was available without any accessories, dropping
the price to .


Decline
=========
In 1993, Atari started shifting its focus away from the Lynx in order
to prepare for the launch of the Jaguar; a few games were released
during that time, including 'Battlezone 2000'. Support for the Lynx
was formally discontinued in 1995.

After the respective launches of the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation
caused the commercial failure of the Jaguar, Atari ceased all game
development and hardware manufacturing by early 1996 and would later
merge with JTS, Inc. on July 30 of that year.


                              Features
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The Atari Lynx has a backlit color LCD display, switchable right- and
left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network
with other units via Comlynx cable. The maximum stable connection
allowed is eight players. Each Lynx needs a copy of the game, and one
cable can connect two machines. The cables can be connected into a
chain.


The Lynx was cited as the "first gaming console with hardware support
for zooming and distortion of sprites". With a 4096 color palette and
integrated maths and graphics co-processors (including a sprite engine
unit), its color graphics display was said to be the key defining
feature in the system's competition against Nintendo's monochromatic
Game Boy. The fast pseudo-3D graphics features were made possible on a
minimal hardware system by co-designer Dave Needle having "invented
the technique for planar expansion/shrinking capability" and using
stretched triangles instead of full polygons.


                      Technical specifications
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* Mikey (8-bit VLSI custom CMOS chip running at 16 MHz)
** On Lynx I a VLSI 8-bit VL65NC02 processor (based on the MOS 6502)
running at up to 4 MHz (3.6 MHz average). In the stereo version of
Lynx II a 65C02 with all instructions.
** Sound engine
*** 4 channel sound
*** 8-bit DAC for each channel (4 channels × 8-bits/channel = 32 bits
commonly quoted) these four sound channels can also switch in analogue
sound mode to generate PSG sound.
** Video DMA driver for liquid-crystal display
*** Custom built and designed by Jay Miner and Dave Morse
*** 160×102 pixels resolution
*** 4,096 color (12-bit) palette
*** 16 simultaneous colors (4 bits) from palette per scanline
*** Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second)
** Eight system timers (two reserved for LCD timing, one for UART)
** Interrupt controller
** UART (for Comlynx) (fixed format 8E1, up to 62500 Bd / TurboMode
1,000,000Bd)
** 512 bytes of bootstrap and game-card loading ROM
* Suzy (16-bit VLSI custom CMOS chip running at )
** Unlimited number of blitter "sprites" with collision detection
** Hardware sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects
** Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data
** Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling
** Math engine
*** Hardware 16-bit × 16-bit → 32-bit multiply with optional
accumulation; 32-bit ÷ 16-bit → 16-bit divide
*** Parallel processing of CPU
* RAM: 64 KB 120ns DRAM
* Cartridges: 128, 256, 512 KB and (with bank-switching) 1 MB
* Ports:
** Headphone port ( 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 (Lynx II)


                               Legacy
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Telegames released several games in the late 1990s, including a port
of 'Raiden' and a platformer called 'Fat Bobby' in 1997, and an action
sports game called 'Hyperdrome' in 1999.

On March 13, 1998, nearly three years after the Lynx's
discontinuation, JTS Corporation sold all of the Atari assets to
Hasbro Interactive for $5 million. On May 14, 1999, Hasbro, which held
on to those properties until selling Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames
in 2001, released into the public domain all rights to the Jaguar,
opening up the platform for anyone to publish software on without
Hasbro's interference. Internet theories say that the Lynx's rights
may have been released to the public at the same time as the Jaguar,
but this is clearly disputed. Nevertheless, since discontinuation, the
Lynx, like the Jaguar, has continued to receive support from a
grassroots community which would go on to produce many successful
homebrew games such as 'T-Tris' (the first Lynx game with a save-game
feature), 'Alpine Games', and 'Zaku'.

In 2008, Atari was honored at the 59th Annual Technology &
Engineering Emmy Awards for pioneering the development of handheld
games with the Lynx.

In 2022, the compilation 'Atari 50' released with a handful of popular
Lynx titles, marking the first time that classic Lynx software would
be officially rereleased by Atari. A collection of Lynx games have
also been released as standalone titles outside of the 'Atari 50'
compilation as well on other platforms such as Steam and the Evercade.


                              See also
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* List of Atari Lynx games
* History of Atari


                           External links
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* [https://www.atariage.com/software_search.php?SystemID=LYNX AtariAge
- Comprehensive Lynx Database and information]
* [http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/index.php?page=atarilynx Guide to
Atari Lynx games at Retro Video Gamer]
*
[http://www.usgamer.net/articles/too-good-for-its-day-ataris-lynx-remains-a-fan-favorite-25-years-later
Too Powerful for Its Own Good, Atari's Lynx Remains a Favorite 25
Years Later]
*
[http://st-news.com/issues/st-news-volume-5-issue-1/reviews/the-atari-lynx/
Atari Lynx review, 1990]
* [https://www.monlynx.de/lynx/lynxdoc.html Atari Lynx Hardware
Documentation]
* [https://atarilynxdev.net/doku.php/start Atari Lynx Development
Wiki]


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