A full price game bought on the strength of the pictures on the back of the box. Yes, that's sometimes all we had to go on back in the day if we didn't pick up a magazine review the month it came out. I love platformers, and thought this would be a safe bet, but it has that weird physics-less jump where you better hope the big floaty arc was what you wanted because once the button is pressed you are committed to it. Add to that a weapon that would stab at a fixed rate that some enemies could walk through and deal damage despite you attacking as fast as possible, and repetitive music that would drive you round the twist. Just a pile of hot ass in every way.

In the arcades, this was kind of a big deal back in the day. It looks like hot garbage now, but full 3D vehicles moving through the environment was almost witchcraft back then even though it was just very basic coloured boxes.

The Atari Lynx version was... well, hot garbage even back then. There is only the one course from the arcade machine, which splits into two for a "speed" track and a "stunt" track section. Of course you always choose the stunt section to try and drive the big loop. But the frame rate is terrible, and the road feels too small and when you occasionally meet an oncoming car you end up crashing into it because both of you seem to occupy the full width of the road at the same time.

Hardly any content, and essentially unplayable. I paid full price for this game and 30 years later I'm still salty.

This was an incredible arcade perfect handheld port. Looked and sounded just as good as the version you would stuff ten pence pieces into.

Why only 2 stars? Because it was too slavish to the arcade original. It kept the constantly draining health bar that was in the arcade machine to keep you feeding in more money. Except in the home version you can't add extra credits so you usually die to attrition at some point if you don't do an incredibly efficient speed run avoiding incoming fire and racing for the exits.

In my hazy memory, this was an arcade perfect port but with the addition of a 4th playable monster. Cute graphics, big monsters climbing up buildings and smashing them until they fall down, eating people and the soldiers trying to stop you. It's great fun... for about 3 levels, at which point you realise every level is exactly the same and you're just going through the motions of punching buildings until you eventually die from the army attacks. Great for a single credit of fun in an arcade, but not so great for a full-price home video game.

Straightforward and decent arcade port. Run to the right hitting things and jumping over things. Managed just once to get into a vibe and did a successful clearing of the game. Fairly repetitive, but was designed to suck up a couple of credits in an arcade so a product of its times. I did like that instead of an arbitrary insta-death when the timer ran down (a common thing in older games that I hated), linger too long on a level and it spawned a giant demon head that would chase you and try to kill you.

Actually superior on the Atari Lynx than in the arcade, if only because it cut down on the number of buttons needed to perform actions. Still not by enough though, separate buttons for standing up and crouching? Really? Nobody thought to make that a toggle, or better yet just pushing up/down on the controller?

Still, a little better than the arcade version. Being able to play as one of the Xenos was a cool idea, but that relied upon knowing other people who were daft enough to buy an Atari Lynx and I maintain that no owner of that console ever met someone else who owned one. Oh how I'd have loved to have tried this game in mulitplayer though.

Another of the graphically very impressive games, using the sprite scaling tech that the Atari Lynx was so good at. It's not a bad game, it's just not exciting or interesting in any way. You fly sideways, and shoot the tons of enemies that are coming towards you (mostly not attacking you), go through a gate and do it all again on another world. I usually ended up ending runs not from dying, but just turning off the game because it seemed to go on forever. Great tech demo for the system though, just wish it felt like it had any sense of progression or purpose to it.

A collection of 4 mini-games, only one of which was any good.

Surfing - some very tinny music surf rock music as you ride up and down a wave to build speed and do 360 degree spins off the top. Game would end if you wiped out, and you'd mostly wipe out by getting bored of doing 360s and try for a double spin instead. Could have been fun in local multiplayer, but nobody ever knew a second person with an Atari Lynx.

Halfpipe - basically unplayable, you might be able to get one, maybe two runs across the halfpipe on a skateboard but instantly bailing was what usually happened. Bafflingly unusable controls so you'd quit out almost immediately.

Hacky sack - playing keepy uppy for a minute using heels and head, for a score attack. Could have been mildly diverting if not for the fact the hacky sack would move left/right faster than the player could move to compensate for it, so you couldn't get a perfect combo going.

BMX - the only good game on the cart, and even then it's a little frustrating. One (1) fairly short downhill course, but it was a ton of fun to do jumps and backflips off the edges of the undulating hill. Annoyingly though, the course had a slight 3D effect where you could move left and right a little, which would only put you into collision course with hay bales so you'd avoid moving off the starting line at all. Only to always run into that one hay bale further down the hill the designers wanted you to steer around. Very short, often annoying, but somehow I replayed this one mini-game a ton 30 years ago because it was still one of the best things on the platform.

Incredible visuals for a handheld game, Blue Lighting had "I can't believe they can do this" graphics. If you wanted to impress someone with an Atari Lynx, you'd show them this.

Sadly, it just wasn't actually very fun to play. You could fly up into the clouds, or down low to dodge buttes in the desert, but most of the enemies sort of fly past you and only shoot near you, very little in the way of direct attacks. You'd die sometimes, but it felt like a random event not the result of being bad at flying the plane.

Sure was a pretty game though.