TailChao

Progress is going slowly because of some other projects I've had, plus I've redesigned a considerable amount of the game itself, requiring me to go back and redo alot of artwork. However, I'll be releasing a public demo soon containing the first stage. Thanks for your interest!

Simple, Incredible Game Libraries and Well-known Characters You could actually do some neat things with the GB hardware, although it doesn't measure up in full power to the Lynx, GG, or Turbo Express for that matter.

Using a camera and simple A/V hookup can be fine at times, especially with the lynx II, as if you place it face up with the rubber grips upon a good surface it won't wobble extensively, although the control is quite irritating to use in this way.

Tis okay :wink: Agree to Disagree?

It isn't, the quote you took was from an older post on the last page.

After Burner II for the Turbo runs at a constant 60FPS and uses both software scaling and multiple sized graphics for artificial scaling. Although it may not be as impressive as most lynx games in a sense of graphics manipulation, the fact remains that the Turbo is manipulating these objects at a constant 60FPS, whereas the lynx maintains 6-15FPS for its own games. This jump in time is more than enough for the turbo's CPU to assist in generating a display, and with some clipping on the edges (ala SNES Starfox, speed up SuperFX-SNES transfers) it could easily pass the lynx. Running the game in a 160x102 windowspace would ease the process further. Although either way, I would rather play most of the games you mentioned on my Lynx anyway.

Further corrections (Sorry about the double post) Because of the Lynx's all-sprite display, the programmer has two potions to scroll, either move all of the background objects over individually (CPU intensive, but easier to get a nice parallax effect with different scrolling speeds) or all at once by moving the lynx's display window about the display world (more like your description) By "12 levels of parallax" you could mean one background layer with different objects moving at different speeds, or 12 different background layers stacked on top of each other (difficult to get decent performance this way on the lynx because of Suzy's speed). Neither one is paticularly complex, and the first one described can be used with nearly the entire screen in a console such as the Genesis (about 224 "levels") The wave effect is merely offsetting different lines of a graphic, similar to parallax in most cases. The NES or GameBoy can handle an effect like that. Like sage said, there were four 8-bit DACs embedded in Mickey, this does not give true "32-bit" processing. And since this seemingly limitless CPU as you describe it, was the real powerhouse of the lynx, might I ask why it is documented only for use in sound. I'd doubt Epyx's official documentation misplaced a CPU. The device is simply an advanced 4-square wave sound system with capability for distortion and full control of any of the 4 8-bit DACs by the 65C02. As for the lynx being 16-bit, the only element that was 16-bit in the console was Suzy (although you could include the 65C02's addressing ) I personally consider it 16-bit, athough only in the sense of the TurboGrafx/PC-Engine (Which was considerably more powerful) The GBA is completely different from the SNES, the only thing they have in common is the GBA's endless ports of the SNES's games. I love how you fail to mention the most impressive lynx game to date, Alpine Games. The ones you listed could never compare to the likes of Gunstar Heroes or Super Metroid. [/Rant]

A complete ignorance towards real hardware limitations, oh and a bit of Atari advertising http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...1&currentPage=2 This seems to match the opinion perfectly. I'd suggest Mr. Kizza should read the Lynx Dev Docs =P

Ms. PacMan was on both, and unfortunately, the GG port was more impressive. I can't think of any others off of the top of my head.

Penguin Land is a great little puzzler. I can play that for hours, and then spend more time creating custom stages .

The Turbografx/Express doesn't have the sprite scaling power of the Lynx, and I don't see either game happening without it. I'm a huge fan of the Turbo, don't get me wrong. The Turbo does, however, have a faster CPU and seperate CPU and VDP busses, and aside from the lack of scaling, a very powerful VDP. Running the games in a small 160x102x4bpp window on the turbo with software scaling would not be a large issue, particularly with steel talon's framerate.

The GameGear is too far out of range, the Turbo, However, is quite plauseable, and could be improved a bit over the lynx, if there were more Turbo dev tools available. That's the division the Lynx will always triumph in.

I definately agree with the misuse of the sound system, usually only the prime games made extensive use of it in the most optimised manner. However, from my experiences with setting the Z80 off sync from the 68k in the Genesis, or disabling it completely, the most common of commons, Sonic 2, will have absolutely no sound, and frequently lock up (The sound engine apparently runs completely on it, IIRC Sonic 1 only uses it for the DAC drum kit, Sonic 3 & K is the same setup as 2). I don't remember any of this happening to a Genny 3, but hey, who knows what Majesco did to that hardware

Quite! Anyone remember "flippy" diskettes?

Correction; The lynx's VDP was 16Mhz, for all other purposes, it was a 4Mhz 65C02, most console VDPs were 21Mhz It was and still is, a very powerful console, and wonderful development system. However, just the fact that it can scale and graphically distort (The lynx actually cannot rotate a sprite, only flip, scale, and skew) does not pit it against other consoles such as the Turbo, Genesis, or SNES.

The Z80 was never removed in any of the Gensis Revs., doing so would prevent the console from working properly at all, and cause several games to cease function completely, as the Z80 is almost always at least used to control the YM2612's Channel 6 in DAC mode (As it is not a timed DAC). SMS compatibility on the other hand, was cut out, along with certain VDP modes.

The two are actually quite even graphically, although Nintendo developers were much more art savvy while Sega's 3rd parties seemed to be for good coding. Donkey Kong Country and Gunstar Heroes are great means to compare the techniques. As for price, Genny carts were cheaper to manufacture than SNES carts, as they rarely had coprocessors (Ala SuperFX) or additional resources, which were found in nearly all SNES games, the genny console itself is also much more streamlined.

Your GameGear is probably completely fine, but your adapter may not be so lucky... Some GG Adapters fray easily, I've had personal experience with one that would turn off the GG if the cable was not positioned in a specific way. Most of these adapters will run for a few dollars at most flea markets or game stores, so a replacement won't be too large a problem.

Going back to the original topic, The GameGear had a much more flexible display system allowing for 32 colors onscreen without line interrupts and was tile based rather than using the lynx's bulky screenbuffer. However, the lynx had a far faster CPU, making that display buffer useful by creating the ability for software sprites and line or midline interrupts easier. The Lynx's VDP also supports sprite compression for benefitted execution (and let's not forget scaling and skewing effects), although the VDP and CPU cannot share the bus, which hinders the lynx's performance a bit. Battery life was quite even between the two. The lynx clearly wins in the hardware department, however in the software department, the GG had some prime titles in its time compared to the lynx. If the TurboExpress or Nomad were included, they clearly outperform the lynx (and can give the GBA a run for its money IMO)

Sage has some great "learning" demos up at his domain, you might want to give it a go http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gd1113/lynx/ Also, there is a "Fighter Kit" Which details basic control reading and sprite setup http://www.zophar.net/roms/files/lynx/cvfighter.zip You might want to try poking around in some of the BLL sources as well I used these to learn basics of the lynx hardware myself, it might work for you.

That is the basic story, you might want to take a peek at this older topic for more information: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=38756

Is the screen emitting any sort of glow whatsoever? if not, your backlight may be dead. Grab an appropriate defective lynx model on eBay (usually unnaturally cheap) and do a swap of the backlights.

That would work wonderfully, the only problem is converting code used to make graphical tricks on the lynx (Rasters/Scanline palette changes) work properly on GBA. Although the end result would be nice, as I doubt anyone could resist using an LCD that doesn't wash out images or leave blurry trails from fast moving sprites Although that would thwart my fake transparencies method, D'oh

The magazine looks very good! Keep up the great work (and make sure to cover some of the classic lynx games!)

Well, that 16Mhz Chip is the VDP =P If a Genesis was going to be emulated, you need to account for it's faster VDP (~21Mhz? I can't remember the exact speed), the 68k (7.6Mhz), and the Z80 (3.5Mhz), plus the FM and PSG if you wnted sound If the SNES was in target, you'd need to emulate It's VDP (21Mhz?) the 65816 (Variable 1-3.58Mhz) and the extra sony sound controller, plus the DSP for sound (much simpler to emulate than an FM in my opinion) The lynx is closer than SNES/Genesis, but still far from being perfectly emulated.