Lynx

Atari Lynx · 1989–1995

The most technically advanced handheld of its generation and one of its most decisive commercial failures. Launched in 1989 with a colour backlit screen, hardware scaling and a left-or-right-handed flippable design, the Lynx was years ahead of the monochrome Game Boy that buried it. The library is small — around 70 official titles — and collected as a coherent cult set, led by a handful of late, low-print releases and the strong arcade ports that showed off the hardware. The Lynx's status as the better machine that lost gives it a devoted following, and its compact library makes a complete collection a clearly defined goal.