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53-730: The Atari Lynx is a 16-bit fourth-generation hand-held game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handheld game console with a color liquid-crystal display . Powered by a 4 MHz 65C02 8-bit CPU and a custom 16-bit blitter , the Lynx was more advanced than Nintendo 's monochrome Game Boy , released two months earlier. It also competed with Sega 's Game Gear and NEC 's TurboExpress , released

106-528: A 4096 color palette and integrated maths and graphics co-processors (including a sprite engine unit), its color graphics display was said to be the key defining feature in the system's competition against Nintendo's monochromatic Game Boy. The fast pseudo-3D graphics features were made possible on a minimal hardware system by co-designer Dave Needle having "invented the technique for planar expansion/shrinking capability" and using stretched triangles instead of full polygons . Telegames released several games in

159-475: A cassette tape interface physically capable of being programmed to read a tape. Lynx developers have noted that "there is still reference of the tape and some hardware addresses" and an updated vintage Epyx manual describes the bare existence of what could be utilized for tape support. A 2009 retrospective interview with Mical clarifies that there is no truth to some early reports claiming that games were loaded from tape, and elaborates, "We did think about hard disk

212-463: A 20- bit or 24-bit segment or selector-offset address representation to extend the range of addressable memory locations beyond what was possible using only 16-bit addresses. Programs containing more than 2 bytes (65,536 bytes ) of instructions and data therefore required special instructions to switch between their 64-kilobyte segments , increasing the complexity of programming 16-bit applications. Tetris (Game Boy video game) Tetris

265-540: A color screen. In comparison to the Lynx it had shorter battery life (3–4 hours as opposed to 4-5 for the Lynx), but it is slightly smaller, has significantly more games, and cost $ 30 less than the Lynx at launch. Retailers such as Game and Toys "R" Us continued to sell the Lynx well into the mid-1990s on the back of the Atari Jaguar launch, helped by magazines such as Ultimate Future Games which continued to cover

318-410: A little." The networking system was originally developed to run over infrared links and codenamed RedEye. This was changed to a cable-based networking system before the final release as the infrared beam was too easily interrupted when players walked through the beam, according to Peter Engelbrite. Engelbrite developed the first recordable eight-player co-op game , and the only eight-player game for

371-659: A part of the design team. Planning and design of the console began in 1986 and was completed in 1987. Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1989. Facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought partners. Nintendo , Sega , and other companies declined, but Atari and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari would handle production and marketing, and Epyx would handle software development. Epyx declared bankruptcy by

424-536: A save-game feature), Alpine Games , and Zaku . In 2008, Atari was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for pioneering the development of handheld games with the Lynx. In 2022, the compilation Atari 50 released with a handful of popular Lynx titles, marking the first time that classic Lynx software would be officially rereleased by Atari. XGP 16-bit A 16-bit register can store 2 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on

477-717: A similar fashion, later 68000-family members, starting with the Motorola 68020 , had 32-bit ALUs. One may also see references to systems being, or not being, 16-bit based on some other measure. One common one is when the address space is not the same size of bits as the internal registers. Most 8-bit CPUs of the 1970s fall into this category; the MOS 6502 , Intel 8080 , Zilog Z80 and most others had 16-bit address space which provided 64 KB of address space. This also meant address manipulation required two instruction cycles. For this reason, most processors had special 8-bit addressing modes,

530-637: A three-minute time period. In "40 Lines", players are timed on how quickly they can clear 40 lines of play. New music themes were added. The Game Boy version of Tetris was released in North America and Europe as a Virtual Console game for the Nintendo 3DS on December 22, 2011 and on December 28 in Japan. In contrast to the original version, it is not possible to play multiplayer in the Virtual Console version. The Virtual Console version of Tetris

583-517: Is a Game Boy Color game that is backward compatible with the original Game Boy. It was developed by Nintendo and released in Japan on October 21, 1998, in North America on November 18, 1998, and in Europe and Australia in 1999. Tetris DX features battery-saved high scores and three player profiles. It has a new single-player mode against the CPU and also features two new modes of play. In "Ultra Mode", players must accumulate as many points as possible within

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636-673: Is a 1989 puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy . It is a portable version of Alexey Pajitnov 's original Tetris and it was bundled with the North American and European releases of the Game Boy itself. It is the first game to have been compatible with the Game Link Cable , a pack-in accessory that allows two Game Boy consoles to link for multiplayer purposes. A remaster , Tetris DX ,

689-490: Is eight players. Each Lynx needs a copy of the game, and one cable can connect two machines. The cables can be connected into a chain. The leading-edge display was the most expensive component, so the color choice was one of economy. If the low-cost glass and drivers would have supported a million colors, I would have done it. Dave Needle , Lynx co-designer The Lynx was cited as the "first gaming console with hardware support for zooming and distortion of sprites ". With

742-416: Is sometimes called 16-bit because of the way it handles basic arithmetic. The instruction set was based on 32-bit numbers and the internal registers were 32 bits wide, so by common definitions, the 68000 is a 32-bit design. Internally, 32-bit arithmetic is performed using two 16-bit operations, and this leads to some descriptions of the system as 16-bit, or "16/32". Such solutions have a long history in

795-451: The 386SX , which is a 32-bit processor with 32-bit ALU and internal 32-bit data paths with a 16-bit external bus and 24-bit addressing of the processor it replaced. In the context of IBM PC compatible and Wintel platforms, a 16-bit application is any software written for MS-DOS , OS/2 1.x or early versions of Microsoft Windows which originally ran on the 16-bit Intel 8088 and Intel 80286 microprocessors . Such applications used

848-457: The Buran shuttle being launched. This version of Tetris includes a two-player mode, in which each player's objective is to remain in play for longer than their opponent. Each player plays with a separate Game Boy and Tetris Game Pak , with the two consoles connected via the Game Link Cable . When a player scores a Double, Triple, or Tetris, incomplete rows of blocks are added to the bottom of

901-690: The Intel 80286 , the WDC 65C816 , and the Zilog Z8000 . The Intel 8088 was binary compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16 bits wide, and arithmetic instructions could operate on 16-bit quantities, even though its external bus was 8 bits wide. 16-bit processors have been almost entirely supplanted in the personal computer industry, and are used less than 32-bit (or 8-bit) CPUs in embedded applications. The Motorola 68000

954-603: The Lynx, Todd's Adventures in Slime World . Atari changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb stick on the control pad. At Summer 1989 CES, Atari's press demonstration included the "Portable Color Entertainment System", which was changed to "Lynx" when distributed to resellers, initially retailing in the US at US$ 179.95 (equivalent to about $ 440 in 2023). Its launch was successful. Atari reported that it had sold 90% of

1007-513: The integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 65,535 (2 − 1) for representation as an ( unsigned ) binary number , and −32,768 (−1 × 2 ) through 32,767 (2 − 1) for representation as two's complement . Since 2 is 65,536, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KB (65,536 bytes) of byte-addressable memory. If a system uses segmentation with 16-bit segment offsets, more can be accessed. The MIT Whirlwind ( c. 1951)

1060-563: The public domain all rights to the Jaguar, opening up the platform for anyone to publish software on without Hasbro's interference. Internet theories say that the Lynx's rights may have been released to the public at the same time as the Jaguar, but this is clearly disputed. Nevertheless, since discontinuation, the Lynx, like the Jaguar, has continued to receive support from a grassroots community which would go on to produce many successful homebrew games such as T-Tris (the first Lynx game with

1113-520: The zero page , improving speed. This sort of difference between internal register size and external address size remained in the 1980s, although often reversed, as memory costs of the era made a machine with 32-bit addressing, 2 or 4 GB, a practical impossibility. For example, the 68000 exposed only 24 bits of addressing on the DIP , limiting it to a still huge (for the era) 16 MB. A similar analysis applies to Intel's 80286 CPU replacement, called

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1166-510: The "100 Best Nintendo Games". Game Informer ' s Ben Reeves called it the best Game Boy game and a "legendary puzzle game". In 2019, PC Magazine included the game on their "The 10 Best Game Boy Games" commenting: "Tetris serves up addictive and challenging gameplay on the go for all ages". In August 2008, Nintendo Power listed Tetris DX as the best Game Boy / Game Boy Color video game, stating that it meant more to handheld gaming than any other video game. They also described it as

1219-752: The "Type A" song is "Minuet". The compositions "Type A" and "Type B" can be unlocked in the Super Smash Bros. series, where "Type A" can be played on the stage, " Luigi's Mansion " in Brawl and for Wii U , and "Type B" can be played on the stage, " Luigi's Mansion " in Brawl , and " Wuhu Island " in for Wii U , both can be played on any miscellaneous Nintendo series stage in Ultimate . The victory fanfares played after completing levels are different arrangements of " Trepak ", from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 's ballet The Nutcracker . Tetris DX

1272-627: The 1960s, especially on minicomputer systems. Early 16-bit computers ( c. 1965–70) include the IBM 1130 , the HP 2100 , the Data General Nova , and the DEC PDP-11 . Early 16-bit microprocessors , often modeled on one of the mini platforms, began to appear in the 1970s. Examples ( c. 1973–76) include the five-chip National Semiconductor IMP-16 (1973), the two-chip NEC μCOM-16 (1974),

1325-734: The 50,000 units shipped in the launch month in the U.S. with a limited launch in New York. US sales in 1990 were approximately 500,000 units according to the Associated Press . In late 1991, it was reported that Atari sales estimates were about 800,000, which Atari claimed was within its expected projections. Lifetime sales by 1995 amount to fewer than 7 million units when combined with the Game Gear. In comparison, 16 million Game Boy units were sold by 1995 because of its superior durability, pricing, battery life, and game library, notably

1378-522: The Handy Game. In 1986, two former Amiga designers, RJ Mical and Dave Needle , had been asked by a former manager at Amiga, Dave Morse , to design a portable gaming system. Morse now worked at Epyx, a game software company with a recent string of hit games. Morse's son had asked him if he could make a portable gaming system, prompting a meeting with Mical and Needle to discuss the idea. Morse convinced Mical and Needle and they were hired by Epyx to be

1431-669: The Japanese sales charts during August–September 1989 and from December 1989 to January 1990. It also topped the US sales charts during August–September 1989 and then December 1989. Nintendo sold 2.5 million copies by early 1990, as its top seller. About 7.5 million copies had been sold in the United States by 1992. By 1997, 29.72 million units had been sold worldwide, including bundles. As of June 2009, more than 35 million copies had been sold worldwide. Official Nintendo Magazine ranked Tetris fifth on its list of

1484-434: The Lynx alongside the new generation of 32-bit and 64-bit consoles. In July 1991, Atari introduced a new version of the Lynx, internally called the "Lynx II", with a new marketing campaign, new packaging, slightly improved hardware, better battery life, and a sleeker look. It has rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a power save option (which turns off the backlighting). The monaural headphone jack of

1537-552: The US home computer version at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in a Spectrum HoloByte booth. Finding himself hooked to the game, he pursued the rights to publish Tetris in Japan, and secured licenses from both Spectrum HoloByte, who held the North American computer license, and Atari Games , which had produced the American arcade version under a sublicense from Mirrorsoft , which had

1590-503: The computer field, with various designs performing math even one bit at a time, known as "serial arithmetic", while most designs by the 1970s processed at least a few bits at a time. A common example is the Data General Nova, which was a 16-bit design that performed 16-bit math as a series of four 4-bit operations. 4-bits was the word size of a widely available single-chip ALU and thus allowed for inexpensive implementation. Using

1643-525: The definition being applied to the 68000, the Nova would be a 4-bit computer, or 4/16. Not long after the introduction of the Nova, a second version was introduced, the SuperNova, which included four of the 4-bit ALUs running in parallel to perform math 16 bits at a time and therefore offer higher performance. This was invisible to the user and the programs, which always used 16-bit instructions and data. In

Atari Lynx - Misplaced Pages Continue

1696-420: The end of the year, so Atari essentially owned the entire project. Both Atari and others had to purchase Amigas from Atari arch-rival Commodore in order to develop Lynx software. The Handy was designed to run games from the cartridge format, and the game data must be copied from ROM to RAM before it can be used. Thus, less RAM is then available and each game's initial loading is slow. There are trace remnants of

1749-574: The following year. The system was developed at Epyx by two former designers of the Amiga personal computers. The project was called the Handy Game or simply Handy . In 1991, Atari replaced the Lynx with a smaller model internally referred to as the Lynx II. Atari published a total of 73 games for the Lynx before it was discontinued in 1995. The Lynx system was originally developed by Epyx as

1802-487: The game or play with sound effects only. Two of the songs are arrangements of works from other composers: "Type A" is based on the Russian folk song " Korobeiniki " (also known as " Korobushka "), and "Type C" is an arranged version of " French Suite No. 3 in B minor, BWV 814: Menuet " (transposed to F♯ minor) by Johann Sebastian Bach . In an early version that was only released in Japan with an estimated 25,000 copies sold,

1855-422: The game progresses, the tetrominoes fall faster. The game ends when at least part of a tetromino extends beyond the top of the playfield when setting in place. The player can normally see which block will appear next in a window off to the side of the playing field, but this feature can be toggled during the game. Points are awarded based on the current level and number of lines cleared. The level increases each time

1908-454: The game was released in Japan two months after the Game Boy's release there. Bullet-Proof Software is mentioned as a copyright holder and the sub-licensor of the Tetris handheld rights to Nintendo on the game's startup screen. The main soundtrack for Tetris was created by Nintendo's accomplished composer Hirokazu Tanaka . The player can select one of three types of background music during

1961-504: The home console rights were actually not properly licensed, and in March 1989, Arakawa, and Nintendo vice president Howard Lincoln , working with Rogers, secured exclusive rights for console distribution of Tetris . However, Tetris ' s production was delayed due to an ongoing legal battle with Atari Games over their home publishing subsidiary Tengen's version of Tetris for the NES and

2014-490: The late 1990s, including a port of Raiden and a platformer called Fat Bobby in 1997, and an action sports game called Hyperdrome in 1999. On March 13, 1998, nearly three years after the Lynx's discontinuation, JTS Corporation sold all of the Atari assets to Hasbro Interactive for $ 5 million. On May 14, 1999, Hasbro , which held on to those properties until selling Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames in 2001, released into

2067-489: The opponent's stack, causing it to rise. Tetris was first created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov . In 1988, Pajitnov teamed with fellow Soviet Academy of Sciences researchers Dmitry Pavlovsky, and Vadim Gerasimov to create a new two-player version of Tetris that ran on PCs. The game was soon licensed by Andromeda Software executive Robert Stein, who sublicensed the game to multiple publishers in different territories. In 1988, Henk Rogers of Bullet-Proof Software noticed

2120-420: The original Lynx was replaced with one wired for stereo. The Lynx II was available without any accessories, dropping the price to $ 99 (equivalent to $ 230 in 2023). In 1993, Atari started shifting its focus away from the Lynx in order to prepare for the launch of the Jaguar; a few games were released during that time, including Battlezone 2000 . Support for the Lynx was formally discontinued in 1995. After

2173-408: The pack-in hit Tetris . As with the console units, the game cartridge design evolved over the first year of the console's release. The first generation of cartridges are flat, and designed to be stackable for ease of storage. However, this design proved to be very difficult to remove from the console and was replaced by a second design. This style, called "tabbed" or "ridged", adds two small tabs on

Atari Lynx - Misplaced Pages Continue

2226-424: The player clears ten lines, as does the speed of falling tetrominoes. The player may adjust the difficulty before beginning a game by selecting a starting level or choosing to pre-fill the play area with a given number of lines of randomly placed blocks. After completing a particular height, the player is treated to a cutscene of a rocket of various types being launched, eventually capping off with Russians dancing and

2279-495: The playing field, which is 10 blocks wide by 18 blocks high. The object of the game is to manipulate the tetrominoes by moving each one sideways and rotating it by 90-degree units with the aim of creating a horizontal line of blocks without gaps. When one or more such lines are created, they disappear, and the blocks above (if any) move down by the number of lines cleared. As in most standard versions of Tetris , blocks do not automatically fall into open gaps when lines are cleared. As

2332-486: The prospect of a Game Boy Tetris , causing Mirrorsoft to send a representative, Kevin Maxwell , to Moscow to secure rights for the Game Boy version. Meanwhile, Rogers negotiated for the rights for Tetris on the Game Boy, noting in a later interview that the government officials did not understand the concept of intellectual property , and were looking for greater payment than Rogers or Nintendo could afford. However, it

2385-526: The respective launches of the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation caused the commercial failure of the Jaguar , Atari ceased all game development and hardware manufacturing by early 1996 and would later merge with JTS, Inc. on July 30 of that year. The Atari Lynx has a backlit color LCD display, switchable right- and left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with other units via Comlynx cable. The maximum stable connection allowed

2438-504: The rights for the European computer market. Knowing Nintendo was planning to release the Game Boy, Rogers approached Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa to suggest Tetris as the perfect bundled launch game . Arakawa questioned the idea, having planned to bundle Super Mario Land , but Rogers countered by stating that though a Mario game would promote the Game Boy to young boys, Tetris would promote it to everyone. Rogers

2491-519: The three-chip Western Digital MCP-1600 (1975), and the five-chip Toshiba T-3412 (1976). Early single-chip 16-bit microprocessors ( c. 1975–76) include the Panafacom MN1610 (1975), National Semiconductor PACE (1975), General Instrument CP1600 (1975), Texas Instruments TMS9900 (1976), Ferranti F100-L , and the HP BPC . Other notable 16-bit processors include the Intel 8086 ,

2544-462: The underside to aid in removal. The original flat style cartridges can be stacked on top of the newer cartridges, but the newer cartridges can not be easily stacked on each other, nor were they stored easily. Thus a third style, the "curved lip" style was produced, and all official and third-party cartridges during the console's lifespan were released (or re-released) using this style. In May 1991, Sega launched its Game Gear portable gaming handheld with

2597-532: Was delisted in Europe from the Nintendo eShop after December 31, 2014 and in North America. The Game Boy version was released worldwide on the Nintendo Switch Online service on February 8, 2023. Unlike the release on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, multiplayer is fully supported. This version can also be played online. Tetris has been credited as the Game Boy's killer app . It topped

2650-443: Was quite possibly the first-ever 16-bit computer. It was an unusual word size for the era; most systems used six-bit character code and used a word length of some multiple of 6-bits. This changed with the effort to introduce ASCII , which used a 7-bit code and naturally led to the use of an 8-bit multiple which could store a single ASCII character or two binary coded decimal digits. The 16-bit word length thus became more common in

2703-666: Was released on the Game Boy Color in 1998. It was released for the Nintendo 3DS ' Virtual Console in December 2011 without multiplayer functionality. The game was released on the Nintendo Switch Online service in February 2023. The Game Boy version of Tetris plays identically to versions on other platforms. A pseudorandom sequence of tetromino shapes, composed of four square blocks each, fall down

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2756-558: Was revealed that the Tetris property had not actually been licensed to anyone because Stein had secured the rights from Pajitnov directly and not from the Russian authority. Russia sent a fax to Maxwell in England with 48 hours to respond, but due to being in Russia at the time Maxwell did not receive the fax, and the handheld rights were given to Rogers. Rogers licensed the handheld rights to Nintendo. During this time Rogers discovered that

2809-652: Was told to pursue the rights; he approached Stein to seek rights for it to be distributed with the Game Boy. However, after several months passed, Stein had not signed to contract for the rights for the Game Boy, and Rogers learned that another person had approached Nintendo with the idea of a Game Boy Tetris . Requesting more time from Arakawa, he traveled to Moscow to speak with the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations 's bureau for computer hardware and software export, called Elektronorgtechnica or ELORG, and Pajitnov. During this time, Nintendo approached Spectrum HoloByte on

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