Atari Lynx
The World's First Color Handheld Video Game

The Atari Lynx was the world's first hand-held color video game system.  Released in 1989, the Lynx offered true multi-player competition, built-in 3D and distortion graphic effects, support for left or right handed players, and fast arcade action.

  
Atari Lynx II System

Two versions of the Lynx exist.  The original version was released in 1989.  The newer Lynx II system (shown above) was released in late 1990/early 1991, and plays all of the same games as the original Lynx, but has a number of improvements.  Lynx II systems can last up to 15% longer on a set of batteries.  You can turn the Lynx II screen off when the game is paused, which is nice considering that almost 2/3 of the power goes to the screen.  Lynx II has a smaller footprint, a better joystick, and enhanced (smaller) electronics.  On the down side, the Lynx II speaker isn't quite as loud as the original Lynx.  (I think the speaker on my Lynx II is more than loud enough.)   The Lynx II system is generally a more reliable unit.

     
California Games, Road Riot, and Super Missile Command

The Lynx was originally conceived by Epyx in 1987. It was called the "Handy" at that time.  Two creators of the system, Dave Needle and R.J. Mical, were also members of the Commodore Amiga design team.   Originally, Dave and R.J. tried to sell their invention to Commodore, but they weren't interested.  Atari bought the rights to the Lynx and to Epyx's library of titles, and the rest is history.

The system hardware consisted of:

• Mikey and Suzy -- custom digital ICs.

• A 16 MHz crystal.

• Two 64k by 4 DRAMs.

• A 2 inch speaker with an earphone jack and volume control.

• An LCD and its related drivers, backlight, and contrast control.

• A data input system. (Tape or ROM)

• Batteries, power supply, and external power jack.

• An expansion port.

• A joystick, 2 fire buttons, and other switches.

The division of circuitry between the 2 digital ICs is that Mikey contains all of the non- sprite hardware and Suzy is only a sprite generation engine. Some non-sprite functions (the switch readers and the ROM reader) are in Suzy due to pin limitations. In addition the math functions are part of Suzys' sprite engine.

      
Super Asteroids, Raiden, and RoadBlasters

The crystal is the only source of timing information in the system. The basic timing tick of the system is 62.5 ns.

The system RAM is 64K bytes. This RAM houses the video buffer(s) and collision buffer (total maximum of 24K bytes) in addition to the game software (worst case minimum of 40K bytes).  The RAMs have a 120ns RAS access time and 60ns page mode CAS access time. This allows the Lynx to have a 125ns (8MHz) page mode memory access rate and a 250ns (4MHz) normal memory access rate.

        
Lynx Box Art for A.P.B, NFL Football, Ms. Pac-Man, and Baseball Heroes
Click on images to enlarge

The speaker is a 2 inch diameter 8 ohm speaker. The volume control range includes zero. The earphone jack is the standard stereo 'Walkman' style, but it only has mono sound.

The LCD has a resolution of 480 horizontal pixels by 102 vertical pixels. Three pixels, one of each color, form a square triad with a resultant screen resolution of 160 triads by 102 lines.  The column drivers can generate 16 levels of intensity for each pixel, resulting in a palette of 4096 colors. The LCD circuitry includes the power generation for the LCD driver ICs, the decoding of the Mikey strobes for the LCD driver ICs, and the power generation for the backlight.