Lets start off with some background info. The Lynx was the world's first hand-held colour video game system. It was released in 1989 by Atari and had a number of groundbreaking features, including built-in multiplayer support, impressive hardware capabilities ("Unlimited" sprites, hardware rotation, distortion and tilting, 4096 color palette, etc), reversible controls and so on.
The Lynx boasted an 8-bit main CPU with a 16-bit graphics engine. It also boasted some great games (Blue Lightening, Slime World, European Soccer Challenge, Rampart, to name but a few). The one thing it didn't boast however, was good marketing. Atari failed spectacularly with the promotion of the Lynx, who's campaign paled into obscurity when compared to that of the more simplistic Gameboy from Nintendo (- or indeed its more similar rival, the Sega Gamegear). Couple that with a more bulky frame and short battery life and the Lynx was on a hiding to nothing.
Atari tried to re-launch the Lynx with the Lynx II - it was slightly smaller, slightly lighter and the batteries lasted slightly longer. As you have probably gathered, it was all too little, too late to save the doomed handheld.
The Lynx's hardware was always more powerful than any of its contemporaries, yet in true Atari fashion, it just could not compete with its rivals. The lynx disappeared from the shelves in the early nineties, destined for a life of cult-internet-following.
Not suprisingly then, the games and sysems are still widely available on the internet, with new releases still being produced and sold by companies such as Telegames.co.uk. All are available at a range of reasonable prices, depending on whether you are looking for secondhand or "new". Bargains can also be picked up from auction sites like ebay.co.uk/.com and qxl.co.uk.
I have owned one of these systems for well over ten years now, and still find myself picking it up every once in a while for a quick blast of something - or even just to let this ancient piece of hardware beat me at chess (a game at which I must admit, I am by no means good at). I even bought a couple of old games recently, which i thourougly enjoyed, even if they are dated by todays gaming standards.
If your looking for some retro arcade fun, you could do a lot worse than buy an atari lynx. Failing that, there are emulators and game-roms available to download all over the internet - if you just want to see what all the fuss is about.
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