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Rolling Start posted:Kind of. He left Nintendo and designed the Bandai WonderSwan, another obsolete and failed handheld system that was never released outside of Japan.  I think the Atari Lynx was the first handheld gaming system that was able to be played horizontally or vertically. In 1989 (same year the original Game Boy was released) it was also the first one with a backlit color LCD screen. Unfortunately the games for it weren't as popular as what was on the Game Boy (and later the Game Gear), and the battery life was pretty crap. Compared to the Game Gear's lovely color screen, though, this thing was fantastic. Still just as awkward and annoying to hold for more than 15 minutes, but nothing else came close to touching the colors and graphics at the time. The hardware on it is pretty amazing considering the time it was released (in addition to the great screen and horizontal/vertical switching, you could network with up to 17 players for multiplayer games), but with Nintendo and Sega dominating the market with better titles, cheaper systems, and easier buying accessibility, it's no surprise this thing didn't make it. My dad got my brother and I the updated model which is a little neater looking than the one in the ad. Paperboy was my by far my favorite out of the games we had for it. My dad probably still has it somewhere - a lot of the old Atari stuff he has would probably be great for this thread if I can dig it up.
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Sep 7, 2012 15:22
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Lowen SoDium posted:It is also worth noting that the Atari Lynx was a fairly large device for a hand held system, even for the time. Supposedly Atari/Epyx listened to some focus groups during the development of the system and the feed back was that $179 was too much money to spend on something so small. So they increased the size of the casing of the device to make it look and feel bigger. Yeah, I know they ended up dropping the price on it significantly to compete with other systems, but the second generation of Lynx systems were so loving bulky and large. The one in the ad seems reasonable in comparison, though it's not as cool looking. My tiny child hands were not made to hold something as ridiculous as the Lynx, though, and nobody ever played it for more than 10-20 minutes at a time because the thing made your hands hurt so bad just from trying to hold it. It's a shame because quite a few of the games took advantage of the layout and screen switching to make the games more interesting and innovative, but actually trying to turn the thing and still play the game was almost too hard to accomplish for me at the time due to its size. Also I totally forgot you could flip the Lynx around entirely if you were left-handed, which I don't think I've ever seen another system do before. I'm not left-handed, so I have no idea if being able to do that really made much of a difference since all controllers/handheld systems now have the same setup. Still pretty neat that they included it, though. Not Your Senorita has a new favorite as of 15:38 on Sep 7, 2012 |
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Sep 7, 2012 15:35
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