by L.C.

Created on: August 21, 2009

The Atari Lynx was an ambitious video game console released in September1989 by Atari Corporation. The first color handheld portable video game system ever made, it sold fewer than 500,000 units, and was quickly abandoned by the company. The console features a backlit coloured screen, configuration for left-handed and right-handed players, networking capabilities, and games that were first loaded by tape and eventually ROM. Due to its tape drive and lack of memory, the games loaded at an unreasonably slow pace, one of the contributing factors to its failure.

Marketing played a large factor in the game's lack of success, as is the case with most video games. At the time of Atari Lynx's release, Nintendo dominated the video game market with Tetris, made for the Game Boy and wildly successful. Nintendo also enjoyed a strong relationship with retailers, who had to be heavily convinced to sell the Atari Lynx, given the shaky performance of the 5200 and 7600 consoles. Furthermore, Nintendo had numerous third party developers, which resulted in a larger library of games.

The Game Boy was vastly preferred by consumers in comparison to the Lynx. While the latter required six batteries, Nintendo's Game Boy only needed four to play. The Game Boy sold at 90$ in the United States, yet the Atari Lynx was considerably pricier at 189.95$ due to its coloured screen, tape drive and custom chips. The original Lynx had problems with the cartridge slot, causing games to be difficult to remove from the system; the Game Boy never experienced any problems of this sort. Finally, the Atari Lynx was bulky and lacked the portability of the Game Boy, which was favoured because it was travel-size for consumers' convenience.

Atari released far less games for the Lynx than Nintendo ever did for its Game Boy. The majority of games created for the Atari Lynx were simply remixes of arcade games such as Ms. Pac-Man, Paperboy and Joust. On the other hand, the Game Boy had a much wider variety of games to choose from, including Solar Striker, Pokemon, Pac Man, Super Mario World and Link's Awakening. This, combined with the Atari Lynx's miserable marketing mix, ultimately made the console a failure. All the same, it enjoys a small group of devoted fans who create, trade and play games for the system. Players can also download an emulator to play Lynx's games without having to purchase the system.

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