I can still remember the day I bought my Atari Lynx. Wait a minute. "What's the Atari Lynx?" you ask.
Well, the Lynx was the world's first portable, handheld, color videogame system. Developed by Epyx in 1987 and bought by Atari in 1989. Actually, under Epyx, the Lynx was originally called the "Handy." It wasn't called the Lynx until Atari bought it from Epyx.
Needless to say, I can remember how excited I was when I first heard of the Lynx. I remember reading a magazine article detailing the "Upcoming color, portable game system from Atari." When I saw the Lynx on sale later that year, I was even more excited. I still recall playing "California Games" for the first time; which was the included pack-in game cartridge. Back then, the Lynx cost me a hefty $199.95.
Most of the games were pretty cool. I'd have to say that my favorite game was Gates Of Zendocon.
The Lynx was eventually re-released as a smaller, more compact model, but to me, it looked cheaper and didn't have the flair that the original model had.
After all of these years, I still have my Lynx (I have the original model), although cosmetically it's a bit worn, however it still works perfectly.
I recently came across a really handy (no pun intended) Windows-based emulator called "Handy." It emulates the Lynx quite well, as shown in the screen shot below:
Pretty Handy, huh? Again, no pun intended. It's pretty cool to be able to play Lynx games on the computer, although it appears as if Handy is no longer under active development (the latest build is from 2002).