Lynx

Atari Lynx

The Atari Lynx was released in 1989. It was the first handheld game console with a color LCD display and was known for its ambidextrous layout and advanced graphics.

The Lynx failed to achieve the sales numbers it needed to attract third party developers and being released the same year as the Nintendo Game Boy and two years before the Sega Game Gear would eventually put Lynx in the third place spot by 1991. Atari relaunched the Lynx that same year, with a new marketing campaign, slightly improved hardware, new packaging, and a sleek new look. The new system, or Lynx 2, (as it was referred within the company) featured rubber handed grips and a clearer backlit screen with power save option (which turned of the backlighting to save power). The new packaging made the system available without accessories, dropping the price to $99. Sales improved slightly but, Nintendo still dominated the handheld market.

In 1994 as Nintendo's Super Nintendo and Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis filled retailers shelves, Atari Corp shifted its focus away from Lynx. Atari decided to focus on it's Jaguar console. A handful of games were released during this time such as Battlezone 2000 but, in 1996 Atari Corp had to shut down it game development efforts.

Atari had failed to successfully hold it's place in the handheld gaming market, but it's development of superior handheld technology and graphics would not go unnoticed. At the 59th annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards in 2000, Atari was honored for pioneering the development of handheld games with its Lynx game system.

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: 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