Found some mysteries

[JohnBuell]

Forgive me if some of these have been covered before, but I recently re-started playing my Lynx after letting it languish for quite a while.

 

Some background: My family owned a 2600 at the start of the 1980s, and later that decade, after a relocation from Kansas to Illinois, my father uncermoniously dumped the system and all the games We had quite a few at the time. In 1983 he got an Atari 800. My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair, which never did diddley-squat. It too got dumped, and for Christmas 1984 I got an 800XL. Over the years I accumulated many peripherals, and in the late 80's I started going to Atari User group meetings. Towards the end of 1989, at one such meeting, I had the pleasure of getting to play with a then-unreleased Portfolio, and then-unreleased Lynx, with Gates of Zendocon. I HAD TO HAVE ONE that Christmas - though it didn't actually show up until the week between Christmas and New Year's (and I was really supposed to be gone on a camping trip, but came down with a fever - I think my mother to this day thinks I was faking it so that I could get the Lynx instead). So I had a Lynx I, with the 8-direction pad. Later, my brother had to have one, and he first got another Lyn I, with only a 4-direction pad. Its cartridge door broke, and the paint peeled off, and he eventually replaced it with a Lynx II. We still have all three units. Mine went on two trips to Germany, where I kept it "fed" with NiCd rechargables - that type of battery has NO problem with chargers anywhere, I discovered. My original Lynx case is still decorated with German Lynx stickers. Between us, my brother and I wound up with quite a few games (the third Lynx unit wound up going to our mother, who became a total Shanghai junkie - she later got a couple of versions of that game for Windows), and I've recently been acquiring a few more: Steel Talons, Bill & Ted's, Super Skweek, Xybots and Kung Food. I also just did a "Buy it Now" for European Soccer Challenge on eBay.

 

I also still have a number of magazines from the early 1990s, and a couple of posters. One poster, released in 1990, introduced many of the earliest games: Zarlor Mercenary changed radically from the screenshot on the poster (energy level/bombs were moved to the right side, score was changed from $ to Z, and moed from top right to top left, and I don't recognize the game view represented). It also provided a first glimpse at the long lost Vindicators. *sigh* On the Coming Soon page, though, there's one title: 3-D Barrage - I've always assumed this became Robo-Squash, but does anyone know for sure?

 

I've also been going through some old Atari magazines, trying to solve more mysteries. For example, in the August 1991 issue of AtariUser magazine, a game release schedule mentions a September release of "Golf Challenger." I'm guessing, but only guessing, that this became "Awesome Golf." For October and November there's one known unreleased game each: Cabal and GeoDuel, And for "Early '92" there's another one I don't remember seeing anything about at all: "Taxi"? Then there's the October 1991 issue of AtariUser magazine, which mentions a new developer, Intense Gaming, and proposed games: Time Gates, Driving Demons and Space Canyons. Does anyone know what happened to these?

 

Thanks in advance for reading through all this I know there are some other long time Lynxers and Atarians on here, so any information would be helpful!

[The_Laird]

None of these were released

 

3D Barrage did become Robo-Squash.

 

Geo-Duel (really hope this turns up someday)

[SwedenLynxer]

Welcome to this forum! And thanks for sharing your Atari memories with us.

 

Back in those days of course there were many rumors about games heading their way to the Lynx. The magazine Lynx User is an other example, they also listed some of these games you mention, and others "coming soon games":

 

RC Destruction Derby

Strider 2

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Outpost Mars

Space Canyons

Timegates

Driving Demons

Kick off

 

Was all this just disinformation and rumors or is it possible that work was started on some of these games? Maybe even finished? Remember the story about Metal Mutant...

[JohnBuell]

Well Cabal and GeoDuel I knew because they had shown up in a couple of other magazines - I'd probably have even more old rumors if I'd kept all my old EGMs and GamePros from back then. Intense Gaming I hadn't heard of, but the titles showed up on your list as well - is it possible they were a developer contracted to release games under Atari's own label, such as with HMG?

 

Atari's whole history from the late 70s onward is filled with what-ifs - what if they had done their computers the same way, but under a different division, and marketed under a different name, so as to disassociate with games? I also once read somewhere that Bill G. was -> <- close to demonstrating and selling the Q-DOS he acquired to Atari, when IBM gave him a call. And don't forget, MS's first monopoly was in making BASIC cartridges for virtually every early 8-bit platform! The later Microsoft Basic cartridge was even preferred by some programmers over AtariBASIC....

[HGW]

epyx were working on a golf game in 1988 for handy. wondered what happen still

[The_Laird]

Golf Challenger - Never has turned up - very strange seen as its an early Epyx title.