How good is the Atari Lynx "HANDY" emulator?

[JCGhitman11]

I am a die hard Atari Lynx fan and I am about to purchase a very nice Pc for gaming. I will have Windows program to run the "Handy" emulator.

 

I would love to play all my favorite Lynx games in better quality and sound via emulation and would like to know what you guys think about the "Handy" emulator. Whats the difference between V 0.90 and 0.95???

 

1. How good is the quality of both visuall and Sound.

 

2. Does joystick support work good.

 

3. Will Die Hard Atari Lynx fans like my self be blown away after experiencing the "HANDY".........

Edited June 1, 2009 by JCGhitman11

[Tom-Lynx]

I can't tell you the upgrades that occurred in version 0.95, but I've never had problems with Handy. It works well for me and the emulation is perfect in my opinion.

 

The nice thing about Handy is that you can expand the screen size and use some screen filtering techniques to smooth out the graphics. Also use larger speakers to enjoy the stereo sound output.

 

The Lynx, however, gives you a better feel for the game, but the graphics and sound and not necessarily better. Definitely more portable though!

 

Also, you cannot obtain every Lynx game's ROM image, so some games can ONLY be played on an original Lynx using a cartridge.

[JCGhitman11]

I can't tell you the upgrades that occurred in version 0.95, but I've never had problems with Handy. It works well for me and the emulation is perfect in my opinion.

 

The nice thing about Handy is that you can expand the screen size and use some screen filtering techniques to smooth out the graphics. Also use larger speakers to enjoy the stereo sound output.

 

The Lynx, however, gives you a better feel for the game, but the graphics and sound and not necessarily better. Definitely more portable though!

 

Also, you cannot obtain every Lynx game's ROM image, so some games can ONLY be played on an original Lynx using a cartridge.

Will i be able to find the screen filtering techniques to smooth out the graphics as an option. I mean will it be part of the emulator and provided for me?? i am new to all of this and I am trying to learn. I take it that an x box or other PC controller will work fine. I heard someone saying that the sound emulation is "crackling/ static like " at times and not good. thanks for your help and God bless.

[Tom-Lynx]

Will i be able to find the screen filtering techniques to smooth out the graphics as an option. I mean will it be part of the emulator and provided for me?? i am new to all of this and I am trying to learn. I take it that an x box or other PC controller will work fine. I heard someone saying that the sound emulation is "crackling/ static like " at times and not good. thanks for your help and God bless.

 

Just look under the menus and choose one of the 4 built in display filters, availabe in both Windowed and Full Screen mode.

 

See the following screen shot:

 

[onlysublime]

has there been any newer emulators for the Atari Lynx? I just tried Handy 0.95 on my Windows 7 64-bit machine and its performance is appalling. I don't have any Windows XP machines left so I don't know how this emulator performed on that but I can't imagine any Atari Lynx owner being happy with the performance. The audio is bad. The frame rate is horrible even though the emulator says it's running at 60 frames per second and saying that emulation is at 100% (I have an AMD Phenom II X4 running at 3 GHz and I have 8 GB of RAM).

 

Now I understand why most of the Youtube videos of Lynx games are so bad. At first, I thought it was because people were using screen capture programs like Camtasia but after playing with the emulator, now I think it's the emulator. It's not rose-colored memories either. I have a pair of Lynx II machines right here and I can do a side by side comparison for titles like California Games.

 

I'm going to try out the emulator port on my Xbox1 and see if it works better there.

[axh174]

When I last used Handy, it was on my Windows XP computer and its performance was well more than adequate. I noticed some games had slight scratchy sounds while other did not. If there's significant performance issues on Win7-64bit, I'm inclined to say it simply wasn't optimized for it.

 

My biggest frustration with Handy was it did not have the ability implemented to link with other Handy users to play cooperatively (I love the Lynx version of Xenophone and would love the ability to link with others to play cooperatively, if even over a LAN). Does anyone know if this has been implemented yet?

[+Trebor]

Handy is very good; but Mednafen works better (Based off Handy); especially in utilizing full screen from rom load and screen rotation.

Works flawless in XP, Vista, as well as 7 64-bit.

 

http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/

Edited November 27, 2011 by Trebor

[onlysublime]

I'll try Mednafen. thanks for the reply!!! the Handy emulator was so poor for me that I actually dug up my old Atari Lynxes to play again and forgot how poor the LCD screens were.

[BillyHW]

Does anyone know if MESS has a Lynx emulator?