Handy
The Atari Lynx Emulator

Handy is the creation of Keith Wilkins, and is intended to emulate the Atari Lynx; the world's first color handheld video game system.  Handy is written using MSVC 5.0 in C++ using MFC in the Windows areas.   The underlying Lynx emulation is written entirely in C++ and should be reasonably easy to port to any other architecture.

 
Centipede and Gauntlet: The Third Encounter

This release is only for Pentium machines and will run at about 60%-100% of the speed of the original Lynx on a Pentium 133. This new release does focus on speed improvements.

System Requirements:

• PC running Windows NT or Windows95

• 16MB or more system memory

• Pentium class processor or better (Recommended Pentium 133 or higher)

• Minimum 1MB Hard Disk space + whatever images you require/own

I would not recommend enabling sound if you have anything less than a Pentium 133 as its only just acceptable on that class of machine. Seeing as my own machine is a P133 it might spur the author to do some further optimizations for 0.5.

This program performs best under 65536(16bit) color mode, but also works in 256 color mode. It will NOT work in 16 color mode or less.

   
Hard Drivin, Pac-Land, and Paperboy running under Handy

Sound is emulated in this release. It varies in quality from game to game, but overall, I found it to be pretty good.  The author suggests disabling sound on anything less than a Pentium 133.  Joystick support is included as well.

The author has tried over 79 cartridges and the only problems that he has found are listed below. If you have a cartridge image that hangs at the blank screen (color is random) what you'll find is that you have a corrupted cartridge image. I know for a fact that there are a whole batch of corrupted images floating around on the net.



General Problems (affecting some carts):

• Flickering sprites

• Flickering backgrounds and random color changes (specifically with Shadow of the Beast, and Awseome Golf). This problem relates to IRQ timing, which is unstable.
  
  
  

Problems with Specific Cartridges:

• SlimeWorld - Missing sprites i.e the Player ??

• Tetris - Cart calls power down

• BattleZone - Missing ships, maybe a math related problem

• Warbirds - Dodgy horizon, maybe a math related problem

• Blue Lightning - Corruption of landscape when flying at low level

• EuroSoccer - Illegal Opcode error, on starting game

• Dirty Larry - Hangs program after game start

Go to the Handy homepage

This emulator can be downloaded directly from it's homepage.

NOTE: In order to run this emulator, you must have the emulator itself, and a copy of the ROM's from the original system.  The emulator itself is Freeware.  The ROM's are copyrighted by the programmer or the manufacturer. You are only legally entitled to use ROM files if you own the actual game, or a PCB/ROM Cartridge from the game that you are emulating.

ROM's are not available on Back In Time,
but they can be found on the Internet.