Hey folks, so I took a video of me turning on my Lynx for the first time in oh, maybe 10 or 15 years. I honestly don't remember. I did not try it before filming. This is literally the first attempt and I did not know what to expect.
View My Video
Some interesting notes:
I have the original model, but my buttons and D-pad are the same color as the body, not black like some of the pictures? Do any of you have a Lynx I with black D-pad and buttons? I wonder why there were differences.
The power jack seems to me a bit loose (no magsafe connectors back then). I'm not sure if it was always this way or if maybe the glue connecting it to the motherboard has degraded. I'll try to be gentle
Luckily, no batteries inside. But I rarely used batteries with this thing. I almost always used the AC adaptor. I haven't yet tried it with batteries to see if it works with them. I remember when I first got it that the bottom two batteries would often get stuck down there because the compartment design was a little too small. Loosening the screws on the outside of the machine would help a bit.
The underside of the battery door is all icky. There is a foam pad there and the glue underneath is has gotten all disgusting and degraded. It's gooey. I didn't know that could happen to glue, but you learn something new every day I guess.
D-pad and buttons all work fine. Maybe the lefthand buttons (which I never used) feel a bit newer, but those could be easily switched with the righthanded ones if those ever failed. No need to do that now though as they are just fine.
I have a small 2mm diameter white spot on the clear plastic LCD screen cover, from when the Lynx was banged against something (probably by my brother). Fortunately it's not too bad, and you don't notice it too much when the screen is on and you're playing.
I only have 4 games (I was poor). California games (flat), Gauntlet (lip), Klax (lip), Ninja Gaiden (lip). Only found the Klax and Ninja Gaiden boxes though. Appear to be missing the Gauntlet box, though I do have the manual. I don't think I've ever seen a ridged cart. I remember playing Blue Lightning quite a bit which I borrowed from a friend, as well as ElectroCop and a little bit of Chips Challenge that he had.
I remember it was a total bitch to remove California Games from the Lynx when I first got it. And I was always afraid I was going to break something because of how much pressure you had to put on it pressing down.
I remember the last time I played with my Lynx, it had a dead pixel. It wasn't there when it was new, but came much later. There's no longer any dead pixel (hooray). However, I was playing Ninja Gaiden twice and there appeared to be a dead pixel, but it was moving with the background, so I don't know if maybe there is something wrong with the cart.
The buttons and D-pad on the Lynx I (never tried a Lynx II) are very high quality and feel great. The D-pad has a nice feel and bouncy click to it, and true direction. Buttons could use a little more bounce, but are fine. Not as good as a Nintendo controller, but good in it's own right, and much better than some of the other controllers out there.
The cart port should be on the right side instead of the left.
Now the screen...
For those that remember just how awful the GameBoy puke green on a puke yellow background was back then, and how awfully blurry it got during motion, the Lynx screen at the time was pretty incredible by comparison. I remember really showing it off to people whom I knew who had GameBoys, and there were also impressed. This was the first LCD I ever laid eyes upon. But the screen is really quite the POS now. The viewing angle is less than 0 degrees, and by that I mean it is actually impossible to find an angle where the whole screen looks just right. If the top of the screen looks just right, then the bottom is a bit off, and vice-versa. The effect is worse on vertically oriented games when your left and right eyes are viewing the screen from different angles. You are constantly adjusting the angle of the Lynx as well as the brightness control to find the sweet spot. Jacking the brightness all the way up turns the screen completely white, and turning it all the way down turns everything into photonegative.
The colours are really washed out and unsaturated. The pixels are *huge* and because of this, there is the equivalent of a massive screen door effect caused by the red sub-pixels.
And the backlight bleed around the edges is positively criminal. I can't believe they didn't so something about this. It seems to me like some perfectly cut and placed electrical tape could fix this if someone was will to open up their lynx and mod it a little bit.
I'm not sure how the Lynx screen compared to the Game Gear screen cause I've never actually played with a Game Gear or seen one turned on.
Love the sound, especially in Cal. Games and Klax. Haven't tried the headphone jack yet.
Haven't yet opened up the box to see what's inside.
The Lynx is powerful and could so some amazing things with sprites. Smooth animation, fast rotation and scaling of sprites (I think SNES could only do backgrounds, right?), and tons of them on the screen at the same time in some games with no slowdown or flicker. With a high resolution mode and a composite video out, the Lynx could have been a home system. Frankly, I don't know why Epyx/Atari didn't try this. A Lynx Home and Lynx Portable released in 1987 or 88 could have been a serious contender, and maybe even been the PC Engine of North America.
Edited by BillyHW, Sun Jan 22, 2012 10:10 PM.
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