Your first memory of lynx?

[Clint Thompson]

I didn't even know the Lynx existed as a kid until I got the Jaguar and it included the brochure advertising it, in which case I knew I immediately needed to get one (and I did) shortly after.

 

So my very first official memory of the Lynx is that brightly orange million fold pamphlet included with the Jaguar and it worked, I was sold.

[4ever2600]

It was my senior year in high school back in '89. I just started driving, was looking forward to my first summer of true freedom knowing I finally tackled all of those years of grade/grammer & high school. I remember having brought the latest issue of whatever video game magazine of the month I had to school and almost crapped my pants when I saw, not only the lynx system, but the Atari brand on it. I was so friggin excited. Having grown up with the 2600, 5200, 7800 and being saddened years earlier of Atari's 'demise' in the home market, this was exciting news. The games looked so good. I remember heading to the local Toys R Us to see the lynx when it first came out and it's whole 4 release games... Blue Lightning was playing on the Lynx Kiosk. I had to have one. I grabbed one of the paper 'purchase' tickets that TRU used to make you take up to the front counter along with another release title, Gates of Zendocon I believe, up to the cashier and made my $250.00 investment. I played the hell out that system. My friends would come over and I would let them borrow it and play for hours. I blew through so many batteries, I ended up buying the power supply for those long gaming sessions. Then shortly thereafter, Gauntlet 3, Road Blasters, Stun Runner, Shadow of the Beast, Rygar trickled in and stole more of my teen years.  I built up quite a collection of lynx games over the years. I still enjoy all the classics as well as alot of the homebrew titles that alot of you talented peoples are bringing to the table which I can't thank all of you enough for. Keeping this little system shining after all these years.  It's great to see a lot of the prototypes resurface of games long shelved by Atari as a constant reminder of what could have been. Demos, homebrews, protos... Can't get enough...  

[homerhomer]

I either got the Lynx 1 for Christmas or after saving money with my paper route in 89. I read about for awhile in gaming mags back then. I can't remember what magazine it was but I must have read article 30 times

 

I was the only kid I knew that had one. I love that thing.  I had blue lightning, cal games,gauntlet, ms pacman and gates of zendocon.  I had a case and everything. It was some pretty amazing hardware. I really liked how it was getting Atari Games ports. Sadly, one day I couldn't find it.   I think left it on a bus or one somebody stole it from me.  There is a chance that it's tucked away somewhere in the house I grew up in.    

 

 

 

 

[Jamesieboy]

Hi my first experience with the Atari Lynx was my mate's, can't remember how he got it either his mum or dad probably got it for him. Remember playing it for hours with him and how we thought it would be so cool that if I had one we could play games like Rampage together with the comlynx (Rampage was both our favourite game). Loved how you got a bright colour screen rather than the dull monochrome screen on the Gameboy. My parents got me one for my birthday, can't remember which around my 11th or 12th, played it for many years. Sadly time moves on and I stop playing computer/console games in general. Then after many years using a pc (for non gaming reasons) I started to think back to my memories with my Atari 1040STE, again my mate had one and as I enjoyed playing with it again for my birthday I got one too (not that my parents had a lot of money). Best bit was as my hand writing was not the best (not that messy just I wrote so small I could write twice the words to a line than anyone else, making it hard for my teachers to read) that when the school found out I had it, they said I could use it for my English class and other subjects when I had to write essay's etc (as a word processor, without any spell check capabilities  lol). Which meant I got a printer too!! A Citizen Swift 90c. But I digress, to get back on subject a two years ago I started thinking about my old Atari Ste, Sega Master System II and Mega Drive and my old Lynx. I have been getting them back up and running and looking at how to improve them. Love to see so many others still loving their old Lynx's etc and all the homebrew stuff and improvements for them. Sorry for long post and going slightly off topic.

[4ever2600]

On 12/3/2020 at 1:08 AM, homerhomer said:

I either got the Lynx 1 for Christmas or after saving money with my paper route in 89. I read about for awhile in gaming mags back then. I can't remember what magazine it was but I must have read article 30 times

 

I was the only kid I knew that had one. I love that thing.  I had blue lightning, cal games,gauntlet, ms pacman and gates of zendocon.  I had a case and everything. It was some pretty amazing hardware. I really liked how it was getting Atari Games ports. Sadly, one day I couldn't find it.   I think left it on a bus or one somebody stole it from me.  There is a chance that it's tucked away somewhere in the house I grew up in.    

 

 

 

 

Dude, you totally need to check out the old house you grew up in... I'd be clawing at the walls to find it... lol

[harmonyFM]

It’s an early-bird Floridian winter weekend kind of day sometime in the mid-2000’s and I am walking through the thunderbird drive-in parking lot. There’s a swap meet going on and I’m picking through boxes of old hair dryers, wires and discolored plastic bits looking for stuff. At the bottom of a black plastic Publix basket I find an Atari Lynx and a Sega 32x. Took both home for 7$. Not my best swap meet pickup but definitely close to it. It was one of the chunky models and worked just fine after a good cleaning to remove some sticky business. Ah, I miss those carefree days picking through garbage looking for treasures.

[Songbird]

I only learned about the existence of the Lynx probably around 1993, maybe as late as 1994. Heard about it on Usenet from other Atari fans (I was/am a big 2600 fan too). Went to the local TRU and they had no systems and exactly one unit of one Lynx game left in stock: Pac-Land. Eventually found some of the other game store chains had the Lynx + 4 game bundles, bought one, then later bought another, then even later bought as many as I could find when the price dropped to under $50 for the bundle.

 

I've been posting some photos of old dev tools and my very first "too tall" green PCB games like Ponx and Lexis on the Songbird Twitter account. Be sure to follow me on Twitter if you want to see more Lynx content!

[juansolo]

Computer show back in the days when I went to such things. I don't remmeber how exactly we talked the fella into bringing one out for us to have a go with as it was pre-release as far as I remember. But I seem to remember playing it at that show and needing one. One of the few things I've ever bought on release day.

[homerhomer]

On 12/7/2020 at 7:25 PM, 4ever2600 said:

Dude, you totally need to check out the old house you grew up in... I'd be clawing at the walls to find it... lol

Yeah, looked around awhile back and never found anything. ?

[zzip]

I can remember where I first heard of 7800, Atari ST, XEGS, Falcon and Jaguar.   But not Lynx!

 

There was a few years when I kinda withdrew from tech and was more into other things,  like cars and girls :)   That was around the time Lynx was announced.

 

 

I do remember I bought my Lynx second hand from my college roommate though.

[unoclay]

On 12/3/2020 at 4:08 AM, homerhomer said:

I either got the Lynx 1 for Christmas or after saving money with my paper route in 89.

 

 

 

 

I was a longtime paperboy in our small Pennsylvania town and was my first job and the way i saved money for all kinds of stuff.  It's very, very likely that the cash from that route may have been how i paid for my own first Lynx---its blurry memory.  

 

One of the many sad things about the downfall of the newspaper (besides the hard losses to journalism and an informed public) is also the loss of this first job, the paper route.  I have a lot of nostalgia for that, and constantly think how it taught me valuable skills for employment, not to mention endurance for riding a bike up steep hills in icy rain and snow.  ;']

[sirlynxalot]

My family had some atari 2600s when I was a kid in the early 90s and I loved them.  I went to a friend's house probably around 1993 and he pulled out his big brothers lynx!  I was mesmerized, here was a tiny cool looking game device that virtually no one knows about, with better capabilities than the gameboy and at least on par with the gamegear, and its made by atari no less!  I strongly wanted one, but being in elementary school, I didn't have the money or the ability to convince my parents to get one.  On top of that, the lynx was basically out of stores at that point so I literally never saw one for sale at any toy stores or game stores I went to at this time.  This friend moved away a short time later, so I only played it this one time at his house.

 

Around 1999/2000, I had a different friend who had a giant video game collection and he happened to have a beat up Lynx 1 and a couple games he'd gotten at a flea market or yard sale.  That gave me the opportunity to check out the system again (and introduced me to the brilliant game Zarlor Mercenary) and I knew I had to have one - particularly a Lynx I, which I thought was a cool design! Lynx emulators were just starting to exist around that time and I downloaded one and some lynx roms to check out the system.  I had a lot of fun with that but then moved on to other things.  *Side note, this friend and I were searching the web to learn more about the atari lynx at that time and we were mystified that Todd's Adventures in Slime World could theoretically support up to 8 players.  I think we even signed up for a forum on a website called atarilynx.com at the time to talk about the lynx.  I used this same screenname, wonder if that's archived somewhere.

 

Then around 2012 I was an adult with disposable income. I was getting back into video games as a nostalgia thing.  Once I discovered Best Electronics existed and (at the time) had basically like-new lynxes for about $40, I eagerly bought one and fulfilled my childhood dream. And that was my onramp into actually owning my first lynx game system!

 

The system has always worked well, but I haven't turned it on in maybe two years.  These days I'm starting to get a little scared to turn it on in case the zenner diode has failed and I inadvertently fry my lynx lol

Edited February 20, 2021 by sirlynxalot