Atari Gamer articles

[Lost Dragon]

Ah, which issue of Retrogamer was it?

Despite its ressemblance to Air Zonk it certainly is among the best Lynx games.

Issue 73 has the review.

 

Issue 72 the full page review.

 

The spat started out over the score and lack of coverage Zaku and other Lynx Homebrew titles had received compared to the amount of iOS coverage in the magazine, then went south pretty quick

[Igor]

Zaku will always stay with me, for the drama at the time over the review RetroGamer magazine gave to it at the time, in terms of score...73% and space devoted to the review.

 

The magazine was labelled a joke, a disgrace etc.

 

I know there's no such thing as bad publicity, but it did seem to be a classic storm in a teacup.

 

Thanks for putting the preview up. .hadn't seen it prior to this.

 

 

Very welcome! I'm making my way through the backlog of everything I am wanting to post still.

[Igor]

Out of the 71 official titles for Atari Lynx, picking the top 10 platformers is not too difficult but there are still some serious contenders! Check out the new article - Jump for it! The Top Ten Atari Lynx Platformers

 

 

Other articles can be found here: Articles

[Lost Dragon]

Just had a reply back from a sneaked Game Gear coder i had approached weeks ago on behalf of Unseen64.

 

He worked on some misc Lynx titles, i will see if i can grab any info which might be of use to your site.

[Igor]

Awesome! Commercial titles or home brews or just personal projects?

[Lost Dragon]

Commercial.

 

He asked for a set of questions to be sent so he can give more detailed answers, which i have donever.

 

I did jokingly say that's usually the kiss of death-people say send over a list of Q's and then you never hear from them again.

 

He's a Lynx fan:

 

'The Atari Lynx hardware totally spoiled me - they had top notch development kits, and the Amiga based development system and included assembly language libraries really helped people get started with development. Of all the systems to work on, I had the most enjoyment with the Atari Lynx (well, other than hardcore work on the Playstation 3).

 

Let me know what other questions you have and I can make a more detailed set of answers.'

Edited September 8, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Igor]

Always good to hear from a developer like this

[Lost Dragon]

Always good to hear from a developer like this

I like to think there is always potential to get new information as well as covering the more familiar and well trodden path when doing simple email based Q and A stuff.

 

Jim Gregory of HMS had been interviewed before, but i had never seen him asked about his work on the Panther.

 

Lore Design interviewed by the dropped 4 player mode from Lynx Kung Food was news.

 

Even if it's just odds n sods of info that come back, it's nice to document it whilst people are still with us and willing to chat.

[Igor]

Zaku 2018 re-release has landed, before we play however, it's time for an unboxing! Read about it here - Zaku 2018 Re-Release - Unboxing



More articles can be found here: Articles

[Lost Dragon]

You and others might be able to help on this one.

 

The superb Blue Lightning joins Zarlor Merc and Chips Challenge as having a hidden Easter Egg...1 of Stephen Landrum's Mandelbot set generators..

 

These he wrote whilst Lynx hardware was in R+D to stress test specific aspects of the Lynx hardware and were included on these games as there was enough space on the cartridges to include them..

 

But Stephen says only the unreleased version has it...

 

Where as R.J Mical claims it did make it out to a few retail versions.

 

Apparently entering the Level 9 code:LIFE, but hit B instead of A it activates.

 

Has anyone discovered the easter egg on their versions? .

 

A friend of mine looked back through his old RetroGamer magazine feature on the game, nothing mentioned there.

 

Nor was the claim game had a working title of Blue Harrier...

 

Anyone know any details on either of the above?.

[Igor]

I tried it on all my copies for BL and none of them had this. I've tried all of the flat, ridged and curved lip variants.

[+davidcalgary29]

This week's new article - Sounds good to me! The Top 10 best audio experiences on Atari Lynx

 

2018-08-20_sounds_good_scaled_watermarked.jpg

 

More articles can be found here - Articles

Nice! How about a follow-up article about two other musical gems — Lemmings and Loopz — that didn’t make the first cut?

[Lost Dragon]

I tried it on all my copies for BL and none of them had this. I've tried all of the flat, ridged and curved lip variants.

Really appreciate you taking time to run a few tests.

 

I'm thinking Stephen's quote is possibly the more reliable as it sounds like he kept the only copy with it on for himself.

 

He's been a fantastic source of addt. Lynx info, i hadn't previously been aware of the custom coded Store Display version of the game, always in attract mode and coded so Lynx wouldn't go into power saving mode either.

 

He's been very open about Epyx as a company, how hard it was to convince people to support the Lynx once it was an Atari product.

 

You name it.

[Igor]

Nice! How about a follow-up article about two other musical gems — Lemmings and Loopz — that didn’t make the first cut?

 

 

I'll ask the author to consider it, there's another article that covers game music themes, it's not published yet though.

[Igor]

This week's article is all about a new isometric RPG that's currently in development, check it out - Lacim's Legacy - A new isometric RPG in development for Atari Lynx

 

 

[zapiy]

Really impressed with your Lynx site pal, will share some of your articles via our twitter feed.

[Igor]

Thank you! More great content every week! I'm also open to having guest content and articles submitted

[Lost Dragon]

Nothing heard from my last Lynx contact in a while, last email from him said he had hoped to have time to answer Q's last weekend.

 

I will give it a few more weeks and see what happens.

 

It would be nice to be able to provide a few more misc bits of info to your site.

[Igor]

This week's article is - Duplicates and Variants - Organising a Retro Game Collection



More articles can be found here - Articles

[LordKraken]

Other people probably mentionned it already, but your website is fantastic and is slowly becoming the ultimate Lynx reference! (If it's not already).

I particularly like the original documents, interviews and articles!

 

A suggestion though, could you let your visitors rate the games, like in metacritics? It would be really interesting to have that information (and we would finally know who is the best lynx game ever )

Edited September 24, 2018 by LordKraken

[Lost Dragon]

What's the best approach for adding info to the already fantastic articles featured?

 

Email you direct or post in the comments section on the site?.

 

In the past if i have left comments online, it seemed to serve as a beacon for certain individuals banned from here.

Edited September 24, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Igor]

Other people probably mentionned it already, but your website is fantastic and is slowly becoming the ultimate Lynx reference! (If it's not already).

I particularly like the original documents, interviews and articles!

 

A suggestion though, could you let your visitors rate the games, like in metacritics? It would be really interesting to have that information (and we would finally know who is the best lynx game ever )

 

Thanks LordKraken! That's an interesting suggestion, I'll see how I could implement this, I don't want to have user accounts on the site so might be a bit of a challenge since people can keep spamming their own rating over and over, but maybe I can figure something out. Are you thinking an overall out of 10 rating or something more detailed?

 

 

What's the best approach for adding info to the already fantastic articles featured?

 

Email you direct or post in the comments section on the site?.

 

In the past if i have left comments online, it seemed to serve as a beacon for certain individuals banned from here.

 

Lost Dragon - there's a comments section for each article or you can email me directly and if it's appropriate I can include that info in an article, or a future article.

[Lost Dragon]

I'll email stuff over.

You can read through it and decide if it's worth adding to anything planned or existing.

[LordKraken]

@necrocia, I would go with the simplest option first, i.e. locking voting with a cookie or local data variable (obviously people could vote agagin from a different browser or by clearing the cache).

I think the community is mature enough not to cheat, and what would be the point anyway?

 

The only other option I can think of requires login of some sort, but I would use some FB API, something like that.

[Igor]

I'll email stuff over.

You can read through it and decide if it's worth adding to anything planned or existing.

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

@necrocia, I would go with the simplest option first, i.e. locking voting with a cookie or local data variable (obviously people could vote agagin from a different browser or by clearing the cache).

I think the community is mature enough not to cheat, and what would be the point anyway?

 

The only other option I can think of requires login of some sort, but I would use some FB API, something like that.

 

LocalStorage is probably the easiest option and you're right no real point in cheating for ratings like this. I need to get through more of my backlog of bookmarks I have for research, but then I'll look into this. Thanks for the suggestions!