Atari's history with handhelds is...yeah, not so hot. The "Touch Me" was a disaster, and the Lynx wasn't much better. At least both of those made it to the marketplace, however. One Atari handheld that didn't was their portable Super Breakout, of which only two in the world exist, both of them prototypes. One of those is up for auction right now, but we're not interested in how much it sells for. We're just appreciating how fantastic the thing looks.
Atari prototypes! Atari unreleased handheld! [gameSniped]
Vintage, Unreleased Atari Handheld Goes Under The Hammer
7:00 AM on Thu Jan 3 2008
By Luke Plunkett
3,591 views
49 comments










Comments
Look its the Ipods great great grandfather!
Looks like a ghetto Zune =/
The lynx was awesome. I think if Atari had gotten Tetris, we'd all be playing the Atari DS.
I loved the Lynx:/
Blue Lightning + California Games were the only 2 you needed on the Lynx.
The Gauntlet on the Lynx was kind of cool too. It had a ton of characters. That and the Dracula game. I had a bunch of Lynx games back in the day.
Looks like a medieval iPod to me. I bet it's steam-powered. (no, not THAT Steam).
I've never seen such a strange artifact...
You say that the lynx was not great?!
How dare you, sir? How dare you?
I wish I knew what happened to my lynx. I wasn't old enough to fix the broken trace on the board back then, so it died... If only i knew where it went to.
It does look rather good but I'd be intrigued to see how well it played.
@Witzbold:
Chip's Challenge.
Now I'm tempted to waste $400 =/
iPod! With that little turning thing, old tech for touch sensitive circle pad. That is awesome.
That is old school awesome.
That is... all.
The Lynx!!! I loved mine. Turning it sideways to play Klax always got a few stares from those around me.
I always wanted some obscure handheld. I remember seeing the Sega Nomad's at Toys R Us when I was a kid and when I finally saved enough money as a wee little chitlin to buy my own, they were sold out and Sega stopped stocking them. I was so sad I literally cried in the Toys R Us store when they told me that. I settled for getting Zelda Links Awakening and Civ 2 for PSone. Those games practically wasted my life for a whole year. Those and Pokemon Red.
@Ubisoft Angel: And S.T.U.N. Runner.
So what was the Atari "Touch Me"? I never heard of that one. Did Atari invent the DS as well as the iPod??? ;)
I always wanted a Lynx but they were too expensive. Looking back though, I'm glad I had a GameBoy instead. Having a handheld that's a powerful as a Megadrive is useless if there are hardly any games.
Electrocop was too fucking hard. That and Todd`s Adventure in Slime World. Oh shit and Kung Food!
@PhotoBoy: No. They invented Simon.
[www.atarihq.com]
@Ubisoft Angel:
We have a winner. Chips Challenge was amazingly brilliant.
What about GameGear, folks?
As for me, I only had a GameBoy... These things were way too expensive in Poland's emerging capitalism of the nineties...
Still, nothing beats having PSP now with a sh!tload of old-school emulators.
*scurries away to play Wolfchild*
I loved California Games for the Lynx.
Also, the ability to link something like 8 or 10 of the systems together was great. I guess if everyone in the world that owned the thing got in a room you could maybe take advantage of that.
Am I reading the auction correct? Does it say it [i]doesn't[/i] work? I can appreciate as a retro gamer the coolness factor of the item, but if it is just a hunk of plastic then it is hardly worth the $300+ the bidding is at so far.
@ToastyBuffoon: I guess italic tags don't work like that. ;)
I still have my Atari Lynx--plugged it in a few months ago to see if it was still working, and it was. I've got Blockout, Chip's Challenge, Klax and Xenophobe (the Alien clone). Chip's Challenge was definitely the best, I could lose myself in that for hours.
The Lynx kicked ass! 4-player Warbirds!!1 Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the Lynx beat the Gameboy to 4-player linkup?
That thing looks awesome!
Face it, people. The Lynx sucked. It was huge, it sucked batteries, and it had an almost unreadable screen. It also had terrible controls. Yes, I own a Lynx II - the Lynx I was even worse in all these areas.
The games on the Lynx were good, but the hardware was terrible. It killed my batteries faster than the Game Gear ever did.
Atari looks like a sinking ship with all of the financial problems they've been having, and now this.
It's an air-con remote.
@rainofwalrus:
They both came out in '89. The Gameboy with the four player link from the start and the Lynx with the eight player link. On wikipedia it says,
"The Atari Lynx had several innovative features including it being the first color handheld, with a backlit display, a switchable right-handed/left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with up to 17 other units via its "ComLynx" system (though most games would network eight or fewer players). ComLynx was originally developed to run over infrared links (and was codenamed RedEye)."
...and I only knew one other person with a Lynx so finding 17 back then would have been near impossible.
+1 for the Lynx love. Todd's Adventure In Slime World and many others took away time from my SNES!
Hahahaha, did you guys catch the artwork in the link?
"Boldar". Its a boulder with a face scrunched up.
Surprised nobody mentioned Alien Vs Predator, that was supposed to be the lynx' MGS4 for God's sake!
Also, BADASSCAT has a point, the Lynx sucked in almost every imaginable way, and was even hungrier for battery power than my Game Gear with the TV adapter plugged-in.
It almost consumed power even when switched OFF!!
@badasscat:
I had the Lynx II as well. Yeah, it sucked batteries so freaking fast it was crazy. I never really used it as a portable I guess.
Anyone remember the "sun visor" accessory you could buy?
@adamcole:
I actually miss that sun visor accessory. It was simple but it worked perfectly. Most people who rag on the Lynx forget that it was the most powerful handheld until the GBA came out almost ten years later. Out of the box networking (no extra cable$ required) was brilliant and it worked perfectly. My friends did lots of multiplayer (4-8) sessions of Warbirds and Checkered Flag in movie lines.
The Lynx was a great little system. It's library may have had its faults, but it absolutely excelled at its coverage of arcade games produced between the early 80s and early 90s.
I recently picked up a Lynx II off ebay & have since bought the sun visor, power adaptor and 41(!) games very cheaply for it. I'm absolutely loving it and my favourite game so far is the surfing level in California Games. Haven't played my DS or PSP since! And no, games played on emulators just don't cut it for me as the experience feels soulless.
I still have my Lynx also. Gamegear too. I bust em out from time to time. I remember being stunned at seeing shadow of the beast on my portable when it came out...never finished now that I think about it. The graphics were beautiful for the time for that game on a portable. I sold my gameboy games but kept the gameboy itself for nostalgia.
Good times.
@adamcole: The gameboy didn't have a 4-player link when it was released. It had a 2-player sync cord. After doing some digging, it appears the Game Boy Four Player Adapter (model DMG-07) was released in 1991, alongside Faceball 2000 (the first 4-player game for Gameboy) and lost the 4-player handheld arms race to Atari. I was right.
@DreamcastRIP: I would kill for a proper DS surfing game.
@Witzbold:
Don't forget Ninja Gaiden. It was a perfect portable version of the arcade game. And Warbirds is the best portable dogfighting ever IMO.
@silkylove: Warbirds is the greatest LYNX title ever IMO. Oahu kids have a store called Toys & Joys (I/II). I remember lugging my LYNX to Toys & Joys II (Westridge Shopping Center) to play Warbirds with at least 20+ kids, there was always a 4-way match in progress. We'd use the 4-square elimination/rotation method. mmmm, 4-square rules too.
The lynx was sweet junk to say the least :). I own one but haven't gotten around to getting some more games for it. I sold mine when i was a kid along with my phantasy star collection for a gba. I feel like an asshat for selling the end of the mellenium.
@rainofwalrus: That could work so yes, it'd be cool to see surfing on DS. I'm now thinking how potentially great a surfing game would be utilising Wii Fit.
@rainofwalrus: Memories! Warbird was definitely my favourite multiplayer Lynx game when I had my first Lynx back in 1989/1990. The ComLynx cable was so great all those years ago - apart from the great difficulty of actually finding other Lynx owners that is!
/daisychain
Of course the touch me failed.
Who on earth would want to buy a handheld device with a touch screen?
It's just stupid.
@Kirbytheslayer: Defeated the Format too: Bah.
I just remembered: There are stupid people in the world.
For my above post, it's a sarcastic joke.
If you are not the type of person who steals towels, please do not read this comment.
How could it fail with a name like Touch Me?
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