Atari Lynx

Atari Lynx is one of the most famous consoles for two reasons. Technically it was a prodigious console, the first with a colorful screen and the first 16-bit handheld console. It's also famous because it had an ever more famous console as a rival, nintendo's Game Boy. Sadly for Atari, Lynx lost this battle, financially speaking, since it didn't manage to come even close to the extraordinary number of sales that Game Boy had and as a result Nintendo managed to dominate the market. Technically, Game Boy is inferior to Atari Lynx, especially in the graphics aspect, but Game Boy launched a little earlier than Lynx. Sadly, this was the beginning of the end for the famous Atari, that was dominating the market until then.

Atari Lynx is a well build console. It is suitable for left and right handed players and the screen changes if you flip the console upside down in order to be played by left handed players with the same ease. Some games could even be played vertically. With six AA batteries it could hold 4-5 hours, more than Game Boy. It's game library although is a lot smaller than it's rival, since Atari Lynx and Atari Lynx II counts 76 game titles.

Tech Specs

• Name: Lynx

• Manufacturer: Atari

• Type: Console

• Country: U.S.A.

• Year of Release: September 1989

• Controllers: 8-way d-pad, 2x A button 2x B button, Option 1, Option 2, Power On button, Power Off button, Backlight button (Lynx II)

• Processor: Mikey (16 MHz 16 bit custom chip, 3.6 MHz 8 bit MOS 65C02 CPU, SPU, Video DMA)

• Co-Processor: Suzy (16 MHz 16 bit blitter, GPU & math processor)

• RAM: 64 KB DRAM

• ROM: 512 bytes

• Graphic Function: 160 × 102

• Colors: 4096 colors palette

• Sound: 4 channel mono (Lynx II stereo), 8 bit DAC per channel

• I / O ports: Cartridge, Headphone jack, ComLynx

• Media: ROM cartridge (up to 512 KB)

• No. Games: 76

• Peripherals: Carry case, ComLynx, Power adapter

• Power supply: External power supply unit 9VDC 1A or 6 AA batteries

Atari Lynx commercials: