Games on the Lynx that really stynx

[+madman]

There are still some titles I haven't played, like Dirty Larry, but I would also have to go with Hard Drivin' or Pit Fighter. For some reason I would always revisit Hard Drivin' on multiple platforms when I was younger, I guess hoping somehow the game had magically improved

[7800fan]

Hard Drivin is a bit of a pain to play due to framerate. I found I can easily beat the CPU if I stick to speed tracks and just hold the gas down. Ignore those signs near the begining telling you to use stunt track, the game doesn't differentiate, I guess it wasn't coded to require stunt track only to finish.

[Atari_afternoon]

If you are familiar with "Stunts" (DOS) then it is much like it, only slower, and all you have to do is to learn the two Hard Drivin´ tracks (there are only two) by heart, a bit like in many old-time shooters, and I find it becomes perfectly playable. Just be fair: Don´t compare it to the MegaDrive/Genesis game Like Steel Talons, the frame rate is low.

 

The two Lynx games I simply never managed to steer well or to even get warm with are Hydra - and the Chess game.

Edited September 4, 2016 by Atari_afternoon

[sirlynxalot]

I could never make out what the enemy sprites were supposed to be in Hydra, it was illuminating when I emulated the arcade rom to compare it to the lynx version and could see "oh that's supposed to be a tugboat" etc. The gameplay was pretty much the same on the lynx, but the reduction in size of the sprites hampered my enjoyment of the game because I just felt like I was steering and shooting at odd piles of pixels. Road Blasters on the other hand survived the transition to the small screen and is pretty great!

Edited September 4, 2016 by sirlynxalot

[Atari_afternoon]

Haha, just back from half an hour of re-playing Hard Drivin´- and memory served me badly - I remembered it better than it is: It is not exactly "perfectly playable" but playable I still wouldn´t say it stynx. It´s a nice effort on the Lynx, but stripped down by so much. I´m honest: Hard Drivin´on a Sega Nomad is better, plays better, feels better.

 

I always crashed and lost all fuel in Hydra, cannot remmember ever having played it longer than 30-40 seconds until I crashed/lost all fuel again, After this happens the tenth time, nowadays you tend to lose interest, especially since yes Roadblasters is so much more accessible and better.

 

For me, Hydra was like one of these shooters where you see "start screen, publisher´s screen, options: easy, lives: as many as possible, twenty seconds playing GAME OVER, Hiscores, start screen, publisher´s screen, options: easy, lives: as many as possible, twenty seconds playing GAME OVER, Hiscores, etc

[Level42]

IMHO they did a pretty amazing job getting all this into the tiny Lynx......

 

Edited September 4, 2016 by Level42

[+madman]

If you are familiar with "Stunts" (DOS) then it is much like it, only slower, and all you have to do is to learn the two Hard Drivin´ tracks (there are only two) by heart, a bit like in many old-time shooters, and I find it becomes perfectly playable. Just be fair: Don´t compare it to the MegaDrive/Genesis game Like Steel Talons, the frame rate is low.

Yeah, I think that's why I always kept revisiting Hard Drivin'. Stunts was such a great DOS game, even in college it was a favorite and that was long after it was already a dated game. It was just fun, plus saving replays of crazy jumps/crashes was a lot of fun.

[Video]

Hard drivin'? Didn't know there was a lynx version. I like the game on the SNES and genesis though. Hows it compare to those?

[BadPricey]

Hard drivin'? Didn't know there was a lynx version. I like the game on the SNES and genesis though. Hows it compare to those?

It's rubbish in comparison to the Megadrive version, but it's on a handheld. Don't think any other handheld at the time could have run it though.

[Level42]

Hard Drivin' might be one of those games that would benefit quite a bit from overclocking the Lynx....

[Andromeda Stardust]

Hard Drivin' might be one of those games that would benefit quite a bit from overclocking the Lynx....

Overclocking won't fix broken controls though.

[7800fan]

Especially the odd occasional "jump" where you car seems to go up for a moment. I've experienced it on flat speed track and there's no control when jumping. Have lead to inconvenient crash and off course driving.

 

Once you get the control down, it becomes crazy easy to finish both practice and race lap in first place.

[Level42]

How could you control a car that is airborne ? One thing must not be forgotten about Hard Drivin' it is a simulation, not a game.

 

Well OK it's a game, but the intention was to simulate a racing car as closely as possible. Read up on Hard Drivin's history on Jed Margloin's website it is very interesting....they really tried to get all the physics right.

 

Most of us would handle a mid 80s racing car pretty much as we would in Hard Drivin'.... very poorly. But I agree the controls are its weakest point on the Lynx, simply because there is no analogue input that can closely copy the idea of the steering wheel on the arcade machine.

Let alone pedals (with potmeters, not just an on/off switch).

 

It's about the same like playing Hard Drivin' in MAME with a computer keyboard......pointless....just MHO of course.....and having owned two full size machines of which one worked at about 90% at one moment doesn't help....

[Level42]

Nice quote about Hard Drivin' hope it's not too much of-topic....I found it interesting to read.

 

Quoted from Jed Margolins website ( http://www.jmargolin.com/schem/schems.htm#p01 )

 

The reason Hard Drivin' drives so much like a real car is that it models the physics of how cars work and interact with their environment.

 

You may have noticed that the Credit Screen lists Doug Milliken as a Test Driver. He is listed as a Test Driver because Atari didn't want anyone to know what he really did.

 

When we started Hard Drivin' we wanted it to be as accurate as possible. That meant doing an accurate car model to mathematically describe the physics of how the parts of the car (engine, transmission, springs, shock absorbers, tires, etc.) react to each other, to the road, and to the driver's inputs.

 

It also describes how the forces are transmitted back to the driver through the force-feedback steering wheel.

 

The pioneer in the field (in the 1950s) was William Milliken of Milliken Research. He son, Doug, has continued his father's work. Doug is probably the world's leading expert in car modeling. Doug and his father wrote the book on car modeling. And I mean that literally. (Go to Amazon.com and check out "Race Car Vehicle Dynamics (R146)" by William F. Milliken, Douglas L. Milliken).

 

Doug is also a good friend of Max's.

 

We hired Doug as a consultant to develop the car model. At the time (1980s) most of the work in car modeling was done to look at how the different parts of the car worked together within certain narrow speed ranges.

 

Our car had to work at all speeds. The way the car works at high speed is different than at slow speeds, such as when you are stopped and just starting to roll.

 

Doug and Max worked together to develop a car model that smoothly and dynamically changes depending on the mode. (Doug and Max are the smartest people I know.)

 

Atari had us list Doug as a Test Driver because they didn't want anyone to know we were doing real car modeling.

 

The modeling is so good (along with the moving dashboard contributed by Erik Durfey) that some people swear the game has a powered moving seat.

 

BTW, the seat position sensor scales the force feedback in the steering wheel. Presumably, a young person will have the seat forward and will get less force, and an adult will have it further back and get more force.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Level42

[7800fan]

So in Lynx Hard Driving, all those little jumps I get on speed track is caused by invisible pebble on the road?

[Level42]

LOL

[Stun Runner 87]

Dracula the undead stynx.

?

Worse game for lynx to me.

Boring.

Or else I'm doing something wrong.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Stun Runner 87

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

I thought Viking Child stynxed at first too, but then I realized it's kind of a Wonder Boy in Monster Land clone which at least made me understand what the game is trying to do. It copies the speed of WBiML regardless of it not really matching with the graphics. It works in WBiML with the cute/silly cartoon graphics. I've been playing VC more now when I get it, it's an ok game, but I wish the graphics were more cartoony

[Trew]

Yeah, back in the day I really wanted Viking Child for that exact reason. Was a big wonderboy fan. I've tried to get into it a few times, but find the difficulty level makes it less fun. It's not incredibly hard, just enough that you can get annoyed with it quickly (especially when you add in the sluggish controls).

[BrianC]

It's rubbish in comparison to the Megadrive version, but it's on a handheld. Don't think any other handheld at the time could have run it though.

The gameboy version of Race Drivin' (the sequel) is surprisingly good and it's on inferior hardware to the Lynx.

[zetastrike]

What's the general consensus on Steel Talons? Everything about it tells me that I shouldn't like it, but I love it. It's such a cool game to be playing on a 1989 handheld and even though the framerate crawls, it feels spry and that you're in control. I checked out the Genesis and SNES versions on youtube and they don't stack up. The SNES version in particular cheats by using sprites for some objects (including your helicopter) and a mode 7 floor, even though the framerate is still suspect. The Lynx is blowing me away here.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I recently got my Lynx SD card with full rom set installed, and can confirm Kung Food is absolute abysmal trash from a gameplay perspective. Some of the fruit are too short making the stock kick/punch useless, so you gotta crouch D+attack button. But hitting down even briefly when you let up on the attack button causes your player to move down on the screen, so you more often than not miss your attack anyway unless you wait for the killer tomatoes to reach the bottom edge of the screen where you can use a down combo punch/kick to eleminate them. And the enemies don't even pursue you but run back and forth dropping in latitude with each pass, yet collision detection between player and enemy sprites still causes damage if you aren't aligned on the same depth, but your attacks miss.

 

Got to be the single worst isometric brawler I have ever played. I gotta feel bad for the kid who picked this up with his birthday money. Good thing I didn't waste a red cent on this ROM.

 

Moving on to my hidden gem vote so far goes to the Loopz prototype. Can anyone recommend a good home console port of this puzzle game? It's fantastic addictive even though there are minor bugs in the gameplay.

[KappaGuy99]

What's the general consensus on Steel Talons? Everything about it tells me that I shouldn't like it, but I love it. It's such a cool game to be playing on a 1989 handheld and even though the framerate crawls, it feels spry and that you're in control. I checked out the Genesis and SNES versions on youtube and they don't stack up. The SNES version in particular cheats by using sprites for some objects (including your helicopter) and a mode 7 floor, even though the framerate is still suspect. The Lynx is blowing me away here.

 

I feel the same way about Steel Talons. I'd say the Lynx port is one of the better ports available, IMHO. The frame rate is slow, but I have always felt like I had control (even if that control was at times a little sub-par). I enjoyed it on the Lynx back in the day when it was first released, and I still like it now. The arcade version is the best from what I remember, and the Genesis version I found to be less fun than the Lynx version. I've never played the SNES version. I have a feeling the Atari Falcon version is pretty good, and I would imagine the ST version is worth a try.