Reviews
Rampart Lynx Review: Build, Aim, Repair, Repeat
Build the wall, man the cannons, mend what burns: Atari Games’ castle-building strategy classic in a sharp handheld edition, with a head-to-head mode that ruins friendships.
Author: Sal Benedetto
From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Reviews
Shanghai Lynx Review: Mahjong Solitaire Done Right
Brodie Lockard’s tile-matching meditation, ported with care and every helpful option a learner could want: the Lynx’s calmest cartridge, and one of its most durable.
Reviews
Klax Lynx Review: It Is the Nineties, Even in Your Pocket
Atari Games’ conveyor-belt puzzler in a faithful, bright, perfectly-scaled handheld edition — the thinking player’s arcade game, at home on the puzzle connoisseur’s machine.
Reviews
California Games Lynx Review: Six Events, Endless Summer
Surfing, skating, BMX, footbag and friends: Epyx’s sunshine compilation was the Lynx’s pack-in ambassador, and it remains the version of a classic that owners judge all others by.
Reviews
Blue Lightning Lynx Review: The Handheld After Burner
The Lynx’s opening argument: nine missions of smooth, scaling jet combat that made a handheld look like an arcade cabinet in 1989, and still flies beautifully.
Reviews
Todd’s Adventures in Slime World Lynx Review: Eight Players, One Slimy Planet
A vast Metroid-shaped exploration adventure three years before Super Metroid — and the only eight-player game the Lynx ever got. Epyx’s gooey epic is a handheld landmark.
Reviews
Chip’s Challenge Lynx Review: The Puzzle Game the Lynx Was Born For
Chuck Sommerville’s 149-level masterpiece was designed for the Lynx before it conquered the world on Windows — and the original is still the purest version of a puzzle classic.
Features
Neo Geo Pocket Hidden Gems: 10 Tiny Carts With Big Ideas
Beyond the fighters and the famous names lies the NGPC’s secret shelf: a virtual-pet oddity, a submarine RPG in two editions, a snowboarding game, a slot machine and more. Ten tiny cartridges, ten big ideas.
Features
Linking Up: Dreamcast Cables, Wireless Dreams and the NGP’s Horoscope
A cable to a rival’s home console, a wireless adapter years ahead of its time, and a built-in horoscope: the Neo Geo Pocket was doing connectivity — and weirdness — long before it was fashionable.
Features
SNK’s Last Stand: The Handheld That Fought the Game Boy Color
For fifteen months, SNK did the impossible: it built a better handheld than Nintendo’s and sold it at a profit-making price with games people loved. Then the pachinko money arrived. The story of the NGPC’s rise and sudden fall.