Lynx Prototypes Found: Rolling Thunder, GeoDuel, Vindicators, MORE

[+MacRorie]

4 hours ago, Tidus79001 said:

Can you post a link to this?

As I said, Igor is working on it.  When he is ready to release it, I have no doubt he will post a link to it.

 

-M

 

[Igor]

Hi All! I've finally been able to put it all together and upload the ROMs to my site. I've included only the non-commercial releases of the ROMs. These are available as LNX and LYX files and can be downloaded here: https://atarigamer.com/pages/rom-downloads#tbaromdump

 

Please be sure to read the included README.md file. Friendly is a NSFW ROM, you've been warned.

 

Apologies for the delay in getting these curated and converted - it turns out that a toddler and a newborn are a lot more work that I anticipated! 😅

[LordKraken]

Thanks @Igor. Just out of curiosity, what do you call non-commercial ROMs? I can see in the archive ROMs that definitely turned into commercial games, like road riot for instance.

[Ninjabba]

Thanks for this! Really excited to dig through these protos! 

[MichelS]

Yes - Thank you both @MacRorie and @Igor for making these protos available!

Nice pieces of Lynx mystery/history - often heard about but never seen before...

[sirlynxalot]

What is the story of the wolfman slideshow?  A pitch for a game that no work had been completed for?

 

I checked out Friendly, wasn't sure what to expect but that was very adult oriented 🤪

[Greg2600]

Wow, definitely excited to see the unreleased games' betas out there to try! 

[Igor]

20 hours ago, LordKraken said:

Thanks @Igor. Just out of curiosity, what do you call non-commercial ROMs? I can see in the archive ROMs that definitely turned into commercial games, like road riot for instance.

What I meant is just those 71 games that Atari released for the Lynx. These 👉 https://atarigamer.com/articles/list-of-all-71-officially-released-games-for-the-atari-lynx

[4ever2600]

Awww what happened to Grid Runner and Hyperdrome?

[+MacRorie]

Thanks to @Igor for hosting these and putting in the work to curate them. 
 

Also, we should all congratulate Igor on the arrival of his new child!!

 

BTW, if someone tries to sell you Lynx PRoto reproductions with the MacRorie printed on the back, do not buy them!

My van was broken into and 36 of them I had made for the show [PRGE] (and $5000 worth of other items) were stolen Friday morning

[Greg2600]

15 hours ago, 4ever2600 said:

Awww what happened to Grid Runner and Hyperdrome?

Those were not part of the floppy disks that MacRorie obtained.  Several of the roms have been available before.  Ninja Nerd, Pounce, and Full Court Press had the most interest to my tastes, shame they were so incomplete.  Sigh, the Lynx is still my favorite hand held from the old days.

14 hours ago, MacRorie said:

Thanks to @Igor for hosting these and putting in the work to curate them. 
 

Also, we should all congratulate Igor on the arrival of his new child!!

 

BTW, if someone tries to sell you Lynx PRoto reproductions with the MacRorie printed on the back, do not buy them!

My van was broken into and 36 of them I had made for the show [PRGE] (and $5000 worth of other items) were stolen Friday morning

Congrats Igor.  And WTF!  Stupid thieves/crackheads likely tossed them.

[4ever2600]

23 hours ago, MacRorie said:

Thanks to @Igor for hosting these and putting in the work to curate them. 
 

Also, we should all congratulate Igor on the arrival of his new child!!

 

BTW, if someone tries to sell you Lynx PRoto reproductions with the MacRorie printed on the back, do not buy them!

My van was broken into and 36 of them I had made for the show [PRGE] (and $5000 worth of other items) were stolen Friday morning

Shouldn't we buy like 1 and get all info over to you for the police and insurance claim etc?

 

Congrats Igor on the new baby!

[+davidcalgary29]

On 10/16/2022 at 8:44 PM, 4ever2600 said:

Awww what happened to Grid Runner and Hyperdrome?

Ugh.

[4ever2600]

8 hours ago, Greg2600 said:

Those were not part of the floppy disks that MacRorie obtained.  Several of the roms have been available before.  Ninja Nerd, Pounce, and Full Court Press had the most interest to my tastes, shame they were so incomplete.  Sigh, the Lynx is still my favorite hand held from the old days.

Congrats Igor.  And WTF!  Stupid thieves/crackheads likely tossed them.

Hyperdrome was.  It's listed as HYPERDRO.04 on the list of release he posted.  Grid runner was one Macrorie obtained on the first set of roms he purchased and said would later release after a year of selling or after he made his profit back.  Thankful for what was released, just wonder why those got excluded.  

 

Also Macrorie, were the ones stolen look like any of the ones we've previously purchased from you?  How are we going to know the difference from the ones we all purchased from you and the stolen ones in case we sell some of ours down the road here or on ebay?

[4ever2600]

5 minutes ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Ugh.

Ugh what? You got something to say, say it.

[+davidcalgary29]

Just a comment on the quality of the game, not MacRorie's proto.

 

I actually have the Beta, which I got off of eBay years ago from an ex-Atari employee, who sold a whole bunch of Lynx protos in a number of auctions. It's actually worse than the commercial release, if that's possible.

[4ever2600]

Sorry man, didn't mean to pounce on you. Just thought it was a personal attack and  wondered why asking a simple question got that response.  

 

All good.  Yeah look I get it, I own the physicals on both of those, but would still like to fire them up on a crappy handheld and experience them once in a while without having to fire them up on my lynx.  I'm paranoid now about even using my Lynx because of the known issue of exploding capacitors taking out certain chips as explained on another post or two on this forum.

 

I really need to get it modded with the McWill screen and get everything recapped or whatever needs to be done.  

 

Though it's too much money for me right now unfortunately and sadly out of my reach.  That said, easiest way for me to not worry about that is to run a rom file on a cheap Chinese handheld.

 

I really do appreciate all the work McRorie and Igor has done to get this accomplished and am even want to help MacRorie find the POS that broke into his vehicle, but like the other person said, probably some crackhead in Portland trying to score anything for drugs.  Sad.  Most may have went in the garbage.  

 

They will probably get caught trying to do something stupid like pawn them off in a pawn shop as legit Atari Prototypes of Unreleased games worth thousands of dollars.  Losers.

[+MacRorie]

13 hours ago, 4ever2600 said:

Hyperdrome was.  It's listed as HYPERDRO.04 on the list of release he posted.  Grid runner was one Macrorie obtained on the first set of roms he purchased and said would later release after a year of selling or after he made his profit back.  Thankful for what was released, just wonder why those got excluded.  

Hyperdrome was in the initial set.  Here is the list of what was on the floppies again.  I am sure it was just an oversight.  Having a newborn is a MASSIVE time and mindspace occupier.  Really got to cut Igor some slack for like a year (or two!)

 

13 hours ago, 4ever2600 said:

Also Macrorie, were the ones stolen look like any of the ones we've previously purchased from you?  How are we going to know the difference from the ones we all purchased from you and the stolen ones in case we sell some of ours down the road here or on ebay?

These were unique in that they were printed in a grey plastic that was nigh identical to the Lynx grey and I have never sold any that color before.

 

Lynx_Dir List.pdf

[Igor]

Not an oversight at all on that one. In 2018, Telegames re-released Hyperdrome on a curved lip cart, so I didn't want to step on any toes - https://atarigamer.com/lynx/game/Hyperdrome/621879372

 

P.S. the newborn is doing great, thanks for all the well wishes 🙂 the challenge is balancing the 2 year old and the 2 month old at the same time at the moment. 😅

[+MacRorie]

13 minutes ago, Igor said:

Not an oversight at all on that one. In 2018, Telegames re-released Hyperdrome on a curved lip cart, so I didn't want to step on any toes - https://atarigamer.com/lynx/game/Hyperdrome/621879372

Very true.  Thanks for making sure on that one!

 

13 minutes ago, Igor said:

P.S. the newborn is doing great, thanks for all the well wishes 🙂 the challenge is balancing the 2 year old and the 2 month old at the same time at the moment. 😅

Good luck!

 

[+jgkspsx]

On 10/16/2022 at 10:44 PM, 4ever2600 said:

Awww what happened to Grid Runner and Hyperdrome?

GeoDuel, you mean? Gridrunner is a Jeff Minter game that was never on Lynx. GeoDuel is in the set. It's visually similar to Hyperdrome except a lot more fun

[4ever2600]

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

GeoDuel, you mean? Gridrunner is a Jeff Minter game that was never on Lynx. GeoDuel is in the set. It's visually similar to Hyperdrome except a lot more fun

Not technically... you're not wrong, butttttt...

 

https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/atari-lynx/products/grid-runner-prototype-reproduction

 

I def meant grid runner on the lynx..  

 

Know your Lynx Protos!  ( ;

Edited November 2, 2022 by 4ever2600

[+Stephen]

The description on his website says "This is is a **little** better than BattleZone, but not by much."  I wonder what the game was?  Minter's Grid Runner had nothing in common with BattleZone.

[4ever2600]

Nah, totally different game.  Nothing to do with the Jeff Minter title.  Was more of a Hyperdrome and Geodual style game.  I purchased this from that link.  Could have been a great title.

[+MacRorie]

52 minutes ago, Stephen said:

The description on his website says "This is is a **little** better than BattleZone, but not by much."  I wonder what the game was?  Minter's Grid Runner had nothing in common with BattleZone.

The description is referring to the BattleZone prototype I acquired at the same time.  That BattleZone prototype is barely playable.