The Game Gear, Game Boy, and Lynx

They were all good systems with plenty of gems that have since been forgotten. What are your favorites?

Hm.. All three are great handhelds, for their own reasons. The Game Boy, obviously good for it's excellent 1st party games (Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc), and its huge amount of high quality 3rd party titles (Operation C, the Mega Man titles, Castlevania, etc.). I don't feel the Game Gear holds up as well, but it has some killer apps as well.. Gotta love the early Sonic games on it, as well as its ability to play Master System games. The Lynx by far holds up as being the most technically impressive, and it has some solid titles you really can't get anywhere else. Personal favorites include the port of the arcade Ninja Gaiden, the port of the NES Ninja Gaiden III, and the excellent rendition of Shadow of the Beast.

Austin said:

Hm.. All three are great handhelds, for their own reasons. The Game Boy, obviously good for it's excellent 1st party games (Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc), and its huge amount of high quality 3rd party titles (Operation C, the Mega Man titles, Castlevania, etc.). I don't feel the Game Gear holds up as well, but it has some killer apps as well.. Gotta love the early Sonic games on it, as well as its ability to play Master System games. The Lynx by far holds up as being the most technically impressive, and it has some solid titles you really can't get anywhere else. Personal favorites include the port of the arcade Ninja Gaiden, the port of the NES Ninja Gaiden III, and the excellent rendition of Shadow of the Beast.

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Obviously Game Boy owns them all except for the turbo express. Just a plethora of US games available castlevania legends need I say more.

The gamegear has better Japanese titles than its US counter part, Panzer Dragoon Mini, Magic Knight Rayearth More shinning Force titles the only rare and good us title that is able to compete would be Megaman by US Gold.

The lynx had the right idea trying to produced arcade quality titles such as ninja gaiden unfortunately it falls short because it just doesn't have the capabilities to give the arcade feel, heck its Ninja Gaiden III looks like crap and plays like it too, it can't even with nintendo's ninja gaiden III.

I say Turbo Express is greater than all these handhelds the lcd screen was way ahead of its time w/vibrant sharp colors, higher resolution, also has the tv adaptor which is now pretty much useless. but despite that it has awesome titles the bonks, parasol stars the story of bubble bobble 3, awesome shooters like super star soldier and soldier blade and tons and I mean tons of lovely imports that just never made it to us soils.

Turbo Express greater than the big 3!

Pocketgamer said:

Turbo Express greater than the big 3!

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There's no question that the Turbo Express was an amazing piece of hardware. But it ran "console" games. You could argue that the Nomad was the king of hand helds due to the great Genesis library.

Out of all the above I played the game gear the most. Loved the master systems converter addon. About the worst color screen ever though. Its soooo blury. Your eyes somehow get used to it though after playing it a few times.
I played the turbo express a bunch as well, but they always have problems. The power cord/plug in kept breaking on mine and the speakers and pixels go out. At the time I thought the turbo express had such an awesome screen, today it looks really pixelly.
Guess itd be a tie between the lynx and gameboy for least played for me. Gameboy had better games but the "16 bit" color screen Lynx was so much more advanced. You could even flip the screen and play it left handed. Wonder if anybody ever did this. I didnt and Im left handed.

andsuchisdeath said:

There's no question that the Turbo Express was an amazing piece of hardware. But it ran "console" games. You could argue that the Nomad was the king of hand helds due to the great Genesis library.

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I argue the Psp is the king of handehelds because it plays all that stuff. (homebrew emualtors)

andsuchisdeath said:

There's no question that the Turbo Express was an amazing piece of hardware. But it ran "console" games. You could argue that the Nomad was the king of hand helds due to the great Genesis library.

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Nomad (to me) was the king of handhelds for a long ass time. I picked it up on clearance at Electronics Boutique and it was truly king until the GBA came out. The only other handheld I put any time into during that time period was the NGPC, because of its awesomeness.

For the record, I didn't have a TurboExpress until fairly recently.

I've been meaning to pick up a TurboExpress, but every time I see one, it seems like they go for fucktons of money.

T.A.P. said:

I've been meaning to pick up a TurboExpress, but every time I see one, it seems like they go for fucktons of money.

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Metric kilofucktons... And you can't even use the TV tuner anymore. GTFOH w/that.

I contemporarily owned original Game Boy, Lynx II, GBA SP (probably the single most worthwhile "Gen1-to-Gen2" console evolution of all time), and PSP Fat. They all will have a place in my heart... I think Game Boy was still the most revolutionary relative to what was available before it, IMHO (remember those generally craptastic Tiger or Nintendo Game and Watch handhelds w/segmented displays?).

I always liked the *idea* of Game Gear... execution was a little off though. The screen was shitty and it took like 16 AA batteries and still only gave like 90min of play. Or you could walk around with that ginormous battery pack that looked like a dialysis machine. Still, it was vaulted into "poor man's TurboExpress" to me and my friends because it had a TV tuner too... I eventually got a GG for $10 on Craigslist a couple years ago, just to have.

The SMS adapter is still pretty slick. I bought one a couple years ago so my wife could play Phantasy Star sick in bed

I've picked up a Turbo Express with 2 games for about $90 just half a year ago, and that was a BIN. The seller even had new capacitors installed so the sound was great.

The Gameboy Advance is the best handheld ever.... can you say SNES in your pocket?

All were great at one point and each had their pros and cons. Something I enjoyed about the Game Gear was the SMS cart capability with an adapter.

andsuchisdeath said:

There's no question that the Turbo Express was an amazing piece of hardware. But it ran "console" games. You could argue that the Nomad was the king of hand helds due to the great Genesis library.

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No doubt. That's what made the turbo Express great because it runs console games and best part is that its a handheld and ahead of its time.

Xavier said:

I argue the Psp is the king of handehelds because it plays all that stuff. (homebrew emualtors)

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The psp although a handheld is much too new a technology to be compared with the classic handhelds it just wouldn't be fair, it deserves to be compared more to modern handhelds like the DS, DS lite.

GohanX said:

Nomad (to me) was the king of handhelds for a long ass time. I picked it up on clearance at Electronics Boutique and it was truly king until the GBA came out. The only other handheld I put any time into during that time period was the NGPC, because of its awesomeness.

For the record, I didn't have a TurboExpress until fairly recently.

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The Nomad has a huge library the thing it lacked was a good lcd screen, which with a new screen mod would make it arguably the best handheld and it does have superior sound over the TG Express I would still prefer the TG Express over the Nomad though, just the shooters does it for me.

Out of those three, the Lynx blows the other two away. The LYNX certainly did convey the feel of arcade goodness in most of Atari's ports. I still play mine regularly. Roadblasters, Xybots, A.P.B., and Robotron 2084 are damn near perfect ports, I don't know how someone who's played them could say otherwise. Besides just being graphically impressive, the sound capabilities of the Lynx were really impressive as well, it was probably Atari's most impressive games machine ever (even though Epyx designed it).

The Lynx also had massive networking capabilities with linkable games for 1-8 players from the start. Gameboy didn't have any serious networking until that shitty racing game came out with a big ugly 4-way adaptor. I don't even know if the Game Gear had link support.

I'll always regret that the Lynx didn't beat the Gameboy in sales, it had better technology by leaps and bounds , wasn't really that much more expensive (+$50), a great library of games, and a good variety of useful accessories. Unfortunately the system is physically huge, didn't come with Tetris, and the ATARI brand hurt it more than helped it. People just could not disassociate Atari with the 2600 and the game crash.

astar617 said:

The SMS adapter is still pretty slick. I bought one a couple years ago so my wife could play Phantasy Star sick in bed

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Did it have a slight graphics glitch?
Mine did.

I got a SMS adapter for Game Gear about 10 years ago. It got old pretty fast... Still kinda cool I guess.

Remember the power base converter that let you play SMS games on Genesis? Does that thing work with the Nomad? That would be so awesome...

I had a GB, a GB Color and a Lynx.

GB had Revenge of the Gator, Kirby's Pinball, Elevator Action.
GB Color's best Game was Pokemon pinball and Dragon Warrior III

Lynx had a ton of good games, but no RPGs.

Aaron D said:

I got a SMS adapter for Game Gear about 10 years ago. It got old pretty fast... Still kinda cool I guess.

Remember the power base converter that let you play SMS games on Genesis? Does that thing work with the Nomad? That would be so awesome...

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Unfortunately, the Nomad lacks the connection to the pin which would switch the internal MegaDrive/Genesis logic into SMS mode. Kind of a shame too, since the GG screen is so craptastic (and it uses a non-standard signal input from the custom video circuitry, so you can't simply swap in a modern LCD replacement even if you're handy).

Xavier said:

Did it have a slight graphics glitch?
Mine did.

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In the sense of corruption, not that I remember. Biggest issue was that the 160x144 passive-matrix screen, which was so small that any game where you shoot dot-sized projectiles were barely playable, was clearly not intended for SMS games.

Rygar for the Lynx was pretty incredible for its time but playing Devils Crush and Bonks Revenge on the road was pretty priceless.

also the Lynx had hardware scaling before the Snes ever came out

Pocketgamer said:

Obviously Game Boy owns them all except for the turbo express. Just a plethora of US games available castlevania legends need I say more.

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Yes you do need to say more to convince me. The Game Boy had a huge library, but it's torture to the eyes to play the blurvision screen. I can only handle playing gameboy games on the Super GameBoy for SNES. The Lynx was released at the same time with a backlit screen, and full color.

The lynx had the right idea trying to produced arcade quality titles such as ninja gaiden unfortunately it falls short because it just doesn't have the capabilities to give the arcade feel, heck its Ninja Gaiden III looks like crap and plays like it too, it can't even with nintendo's ninja gaiden III.

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Not a very good argument. You must not have played very many Lynx games, it's arcade ports are top of the line, with meticulous attention to detail. Ninja Gaiden III was just a port of a not-so-good NES game, the Lynx hardware had nothing to do with the quality of that port. If you take a look at a game like Xenophobe for Lynx, that game has better graphics and audio than the NES port of the same game, so much so that they aren't even in the same league. And while I wouldn't say it's better than the arcade version, it has some exclusive enhancements to it that the arcade didn't even have.

I say Turbo Express is greater than all these handhelds the lcd screen was way ahead of its time w/vibrant sharp colors, higher resolution, also has the tv adaptor which is now pretty much useless. but despite that it has awesome titles the bonks, parasol stars the story of bubble bobble 3, awesome shooters like super star soldier and soldier blade and tons and I mean tons of lovely imports that just never made it to us soils.

Turbo Express greater than the big 3!

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Not sure the TE screen was ahead of it's time, the Lynx predates the TE. I guess it has decent advantage in resolution, but that's it. But, Lynx doesn't famously and notoriously suffer from dead pixel syndrome, like the Turbo Express. And has been already stated previously in this thread, the Lynx screen can be flipped, and it also has games that are played 'tated'. Some games you actually hold the Lynx lengthwise with the d-pad on the bottom. Games like KLAX, Raiden and Guantlet 3. The TE is a great little device, but it's screen is actually really not that impressive, nor durable. I also didn't like how the system was shaped like GameBoy, which isn't the most comfortable design to play for extended periods.

The Yugo said:

Lynx had a ton of good games, but no RPGs.

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Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Viking Child was kind of an action rpg lite, kind of like Wonder Boy in Monsterland type of game. That's about it though.

I had a GB, GBL, GBC, GBM, gamegear, Turboexpress, and a wonderswan. However, I still can't get over losing my Virtual boy (go ahead, take that out of context). The VB was amazing and studying at college abroad, my mates thought I was doing research on an advanced microscope.

What I am waiting for is the new GP2X, so I can have all my legally purchased portable and console games on a small device

vgg said:

I had a GB, GBL, GBC, GBM, gamegear, Turboexpress, and a wonderswan. However, I still can't get over losing my Virtual boy (go ahead, take that out of context). The VB was amazing and studying at college abroad, my mates thought I was doing research on an advanced microscope.

What I am waiting for is the new GP2X, so I can have all my legally purchased portable and console games on a small device

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HA!..... HA!.... OMG.... I CAN'T BREATHE..... HA! THIS GUY JUST SAID THE VIRTUAL TURD WAS AMAZING.... HA!