Lynx vs. Game Gear

[onklsven75]

Which handheld was more powerfull, the lynx or the game gear. I was just curious. I don't know much about the lynx.

[+Sauron]

The Lynx, of course.

 

Honestly, I think it's all a matter of perspective. The Lynx used I think a custom 6502 (?), the Game Gear a Z-80 (?). The Lynx's color palette was 16 onscreen from 4096, to the Game Gear's 32 onscreen from the same number. The Lynx had a 16 Mhz graphics co-processor, the Game Gear didn't (don't remember exactly what it had). I think both had 64k of RAM. The Game Gear had a higher resolution than the Lynx. It's been a while since I've looked into the hardware specs of both systems, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Gunstar]

That 16 mhz graphics processor is what sets the Lynx apart and allows it to blow away every other handheld out there short of the GBA. The GameGear doesn't have a prayer of doing many of the Lynx's games because of the special hardware the Lynx has. Just look at games like Stun Runner, Warbirds, Blue lightning, CyberVirus, BattleWheels and BattleZone 2000 (secret 2000 mode!!!), you'll swear they're as good as and even better than most GBA games out there...the GameGear could never do these, neither could the NEOGEO pocket. If ports were made, only the GBA could handle them, but they still wouldn't look as good, even with the higher res and colors because of the sh*tty, non-backlit screen the GBA has...

[AtariKen64]

to me the lynx's only technial downfall (theres tons of other downfalls like how it was marketed) was its resolution was pretty bad lots of big visible pixiles

[+Sauron]

I actually didn't think the resolution was much of an issue. The sprites of most Lynx games were usually big enough to actually see them, whereas the Game Gear sprites seemed to be a bit small. The Lynx's sprite capabilities were far superior to the Game Gear's in just about every aspect.

 

The only thing I think the Lynx was really lacking in was the amount of on-screen colors.

[AtariKen64]

yes i t does beat about everything but the display seems so strecthed where as other poratabls dont have this problem

[Ze_ro]

I still think the Lynx's special features are worth mentioning in threads like this... Being able to flip the screen, or turn off the backlight is a great idea, and the vertical orientation is a godsend for games like Klax, which would suffer from a poor aspect ratio.

 

The only downside I see with the Lynx is the depth of most of the cartridges. Sadly, a lot of the games don't seem to have a lot to the gameplay, and seem to get kind of old pretty fast. For example, look at Dirty Larry and Kung Food. The gameplay is pretty good, but the graphics are repeated very often, which limits things quite a bit. I would chalk this up to small cartridge sizes (ROM sizes, not physical size), but I've never programmed the Lynx, so who knows. All I know is that I have a lot of Gameboy games that seem to be a lot more involved than a lot of the Lynx games out there.

 

--Zero