PFG 9000

I haven't played the 7800 version, but I can say that I adore the Lynx version. It was the second game I got for my Lynx, and I was quite young at the time and had much more freetime to put into it. I've put some 75+ hours into it, I'd estimate, and beat it at least 10 or more times. Scrapyard Dog is an incredibly fun title for the Lynx, with hidden secrets everywhere, tons of different powerups, and a few easter eggs. Finding the different warp points and the "key" to accessing each one will take you some time, but it's always rewarding. Once you know how to do it, you can beat the game from the start in probably 15 minutes. Really a quality title for our little handheld.

The backlight button is really mislabeled, as it doesn't turn off the backlight...it turns off the screen altogether. And yes, the point is to save battery power when paused, which once again makes the button label misleading.

The thing I hate about Trevor McFur is that the enemy placement is absolutely horrid. The entire point of a shmup is to place the enemies, bullet patterns, and environmental obstacles in such a way that there is either some strategy required to pass or some skill required to score high. Trevor McFur does neither, it just throws leagues of crap at you all at once, end of story. I adore shmups, they're one of my favorite genres, but I absolutely hate Trevor McFur. 3/10 Raiden on the other hand is excellent. It's not quite as polished as the arcade original or the Raiden Project port on the PSX, but it's still extremely playable. Enemy placement and bullet patterns are impeccable, and the soundtrack is almost as great as the original. Earlier levels are somewhat easy as you need only sweep from left to right to left (most enemies shoot directly at you, so just keep moving and you'll be okay), but the difficulty picks up quickly toward the beginning of the third stage. Also, I like the simulated TATE mode with the menu bar taking up the right part of the screen. The game looks great on my HDTV, now I just need to find some S-Video cables. 7/10

You can play it sideways in the sense that you can simply hold the Lynx as you would for most games and the gameplay will scroll left-to-right as it would for a hori shmup like Gradius or R-Type. The number and the little bits of text that are in the game will be sideways to you, but from a gameplay perspective it doesn't matter. Or you can turn your Lynx 90 degrees to play it as a vertical shooter, as it was originally intended in the arcade. I like Raiden on the Lynx, mostly because I love Raiden and I love my Lynx. But this port really is somewhat bad, as impressive as it is for our little handheld.

Here's another problem, per: in post #12 you indicate you're looking for what people's favorite game is, but in the title you ask for the best game. There's a big difference. A favorite is something that you enjoy/appreciate more than all others in its class. But that won't necessarily be what you think is the best in its class. If you think of your favorite games and movies and books, don't they have flaws that might be surpassed by other works? Have they achieved greater things than the competition? Or pick your favorite sports team. Do they win the championship more often than all the other teams in their league? Is the team that wins the superbowl/world series/world cup always your favorite? Of course, you must be able to separate your opinions from objective fact before you can realize this. So which are you looking for: our favorites, or which games we think are the best?

There's a simple problem here: the topic title does not match its concept. You can't take the favorite of 20 titles and declare it to be anything more than that, certainly not the "best Lynx game ever." Who cares if the titles were selected from their scores and number of reviews? If you're speaking to the posters here and accusing them of selecting the games for the poll (which is already ridiculous), you can't assume that all of them enjoy writing reviews for every Lynx game they've played. If you want to find out what the fanbase thinks is the best Lynx game, it would be best to avoid a poll unless the poll can include every published game on the system. Just ask us what's the best game, then tally up the results. Oh, and I'd vote for Lemmings if it was here.

Apart from the horrid soundtrack and a bit of questionable hit detection, Ninja Gaiden III is a fantastic cart IMO. It always amazes me how spot-on it is as a port of the NES title. I really don't understand the soundtrack though. The NES one is fantastic, and the Lynx is surely capable of doing better versions of the original music. But it seems the bass lines are all too high and the trebles are all too low. Weird.

Is every modern FPS a hack of Halo? AvP has a similar level engine to Wolfenstein 3D, but it's far more than a level hack. The gameplay is completely different; AvP isn't even a stage-based game! And there's no way you could complete the Marine scenario in an hour your first time through. You get better and faster once you learn where to go, just like any game. How long did it take you to beat the Marine scenario your first try, without cheating? My first time playing through Jag Doom, I took quite a few hours to beat it. But now that I have the levels memorized, I could probably blow through the game in 2 hours or so. Even the Alien and Predator scenarios in AvP take longer than an hour your first time through. You just can't compare a first-playthrough of one game to a playthrough of another game which you've memorized. AvP does have a god mode. Check gamefaq's cheats page if you want to see it. Anyway, I'm split as to which game is better. They're both among my all time favorites, and it's a lot like comparing Metroid Prime to Timesplitters. Both first person perspective, but two completely different gameplay types.

You probably fried your Jaguar. The only non-Jag adapter I know of that works with the Jag is the Sega Genesis's. Sorry.

They're well made, but the price is horrendous. The AvP box is a blatant ripoff of the Alien Vs. Predator movie packaging. The whole project probably took about five hours on Photoshop. A good deal of work, yes, but nowhere near worth $80 in my book when I could do the same thing myself.

The Lynx version is really the first Atari version though. The game began as a Lynx title, but eventually Rebellion decided to scrap the project and develop it for the Jaguar instead. I have an old GamePro issue with a Rebellion interview to back this up, if anyone is looking for direct quotes.

Wow, glad I caught this one before the final list was compiled. Reminds me that I need to come around here much more often! 1. Lemmings 2. Klax 3. Shadow of the Beast 4. Todd's Adventures in Slime World 5. Shanghai 6. Scrapyard Dog 7. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure 8. California Games 9. Warbirds 10.Ninja Gaiden III

Heh, same here. After he kicked my arse I tried beating him with the rest of my lives, but by the time I reached the end of the ridiculously long corridor that leads up to him, time was too low for me to beat him, and I was too powered-down anyway.

This is something that's always puzzled me...I've loved Kung Food since I first picked it up some thirteen years ago. I thought it was challenging, but more because there are hordes of enemies attacking you at any one time in the later stages...not so much because of the collision detection. I did beat the game, once. I've only played it a handful of times since then, but still, I find it quite playable, and even fun if you can believe that. The puzzling thing is that so many people despise Kung Food. It's no Double Dragon, but I really can't see what's so bad about it for a handheld beat-'em-up released in 1992. If an average gamer like myself can beat it, is it really that unplayable?

There are several popular sidescrollers from about ten years ago (give or take) that were all about gorgeous animation and not at all about gameplay. Aladdin, The Lion King, Donkey Kong Country, and Pitfall: TMA are good examples of these. I could never get into them for that very reason. If you take away the pretty graphics, what's left to make them exceptional for their time? Of course, I might have an easier time getting into the Jag version of Pitfall: TMA if my copy didn't always freeze up after the first stage. :/

Pocket, that was really generous of you (yeah, I realize I'm a bit late). Will this run on a standard Jaguar CD console, or do I need a dev kit or a mod chip or something else like that?

I'd recommend focusing on Shadow of the Beast, Slime World, and Bill & Ted. They're three of my favorite games for the handheld. Shadow of the Beast ranks among the most technically impressive games for the Lynx, IMO. If/When you start looking for more titles, I'd suggest hunting down Warbirds, Klax, California Games, Scrapyard Dog, and Lemmings (though Lemmings is rather tough to find and expensive).

Hmm, I thought AvP offered a solid challenge, but I didn't find it any more difficult than Doom or Wolfenstein. The transparent automap helps a great deal, and mapping out everything on graph paper is a lifesaver (as mentioned earlier). The Alien mission is a bit frustrating at first, but as long as you take your time and make sure you've always got one backup alien ready to go, it's very doable. Again, it requires intimate knowledge of the airduct system. I also love the (first) PC Alien Vs. Predator. It's got some of the most intense game moments I've experienced, but overall it's not as amazing for its time as Jag AvP. I'll never forget the first time I saw screenshots of Jag AvP (GamePro, October 1993!). They were so mindblowingly far ahead of anything else at the time.

I always wondered what happened to the expanded version. I'm fairly sure it never saw the light of day, as it was already late in the Jag's commercial life when the expanded list of games on the guide's cover surfaced.