Remember the Unstable Warpfield LiPo battery addon board for Atari Lynx? Well, we've been in constant contact with Jordi, its creator, and now there's a prototype board on its way for testing and review over to us here at Atari Gamer.

We plan to evaluate the board with a couple of different LiPo batteries, a 5000mAh and a 10000mAh battery pack. The batteries have already arrived, so now we just need to wait for international shipping for the PCB itself to come through.

This is a PCB add-on for Atari Lynx model 1, but once this version has been confirmed as working successfully, a model for the Lynx 2 may be in the works as well.

If you're into any sort of demoscene for retro computers or consoles, you will love this. Bastian Schick, a long time Lynx coder, and ASM master has released four impressive demos. Two of them were competition entries in the Outline Online competition and the other two were entries for the Sommarhack 2020 competition.

You can check these demos online here at Atari Gamer, below are links for each one...

• Lynx 128 byte Demo: Outline
• Lynx 256 byte Demo: gol249 (Game Of Life)
• Lynx 256 byte Demo: ROToZoomer
• Lynx 256 byte Demo: TUnnelEFect

Source code for each demo is available too, just follow the links from each Demo's information page (above) to the GitHub Repository.

BennVenn's ElCheapo SD cart for Atari Lynx has been in the works for a few months now and we wrote an article comparing it to the Lynx GD (GameDrive) from RetroHQ. You can read that article here. We've just got news that BV has received the assembled PCBs and he's hard at work at finalising the injection molded cartridge shell for them. These should be ready to ship very soon!

Did anyone notice how purple they are! 👾

The Lynx GD (Game Drive) has been in development for some time and there has been a good amount of updates about it in the recent weeks, but this is the update you've all been waiting for. AtariAge has received a shipment of these and they are preparing to send them out. You can register your interest to pre-order on the AtariAge store. The Lynx GD will set you back $95 USD (plus shipping).

AtariAge has indicated that a 'premium' version will be available in the future, which will include a professionally made box with either a cartridge insert or cartridge holder, and manual. This 'premium' version will cost slightly more. The version being sold now is the the cartridge on its own, with a manual.

Both the Lynx GD (Game Drive) from RetroHQ and the BennVenn's ElCheapo SD flash carts for Atari Lynx had some awesome updates in the last few days. If you've been following the progress of these two projects, both are aiming for blazing fast ROM loading from an SD cart. The RetroHQ cart is more of a 'premium' product that features an all new menu system with game screenshots loading, a cheat system and many configurable options. It will come in professional packaging and will be available from Atari Age and Dragon Box. Check out the 'first look video' here.

BennVenn's version of the cart aims for the budget market and provides the basics for playing ROMs from an SD card, it's fast, but doesn't have all the fancy features or packaging, but comes at a much lower price point. The boards are ready in China according to BennVenn's latest update.

Atari Gamer has both carts to review and we will be doing a head-to-head review in this coming week, so keep an eye out!

Since we started to collaborate with AtariAge, quite a few new ideas have come up and one of them has been updating the look and feel of the game database we maintain. Previously the interface felt a little old and like it didn't show enough information, now we've added a heap of new icons for the release type, cartridge type, package type and ROM. It looks much more appealing now and it's easy to see information about each entry at a quick glance...

Comparing variants of the same game couldn't be easier now too (though you can still do a side-by-side compare if you click on a game entry and then from its information page click the 'Compare' link)...

All of the official releases and pack types are included and the rarity scores are now shown next to each of the game entries (where available). There is no longer a separate rarity scores page.

Of course the 'Advanced Search' has been updated to include all the new categories.

Oh and there's a cool new Legend at the bottom of the game listing too!

The Collection Tracker has had the same changes introduced too.

Enjoy!

Just when you thought that BennVenn was simply going to make a cheap version of an SD cart, he blows everyone away with an update like this. BV has been working on making a mold for making plastic shells for his upcoming BennVenn's ElCheapo SD cartridge (a flashable SD cart for Atari Lynx).

The injection mold is almost ready, here's a short video of the milling machine doing its thing...

The results are quite impressive too. So far these shells do not have voids for PCBs, but that's something BV has been thinking about.

His plan is to inject the molten plastic into the mold with the cart PCB inside it. No glue required! So far this only worked with his earlier BennVenn 512k Flash & 1kbit EEPROM Lynx Cart prototype PCB, but should be possible to get to work with the ElCheapoSD PCB too.

Looks very cool and the pre-orders for the ElCheapoSD cartridge are already open. Hopefully we'll see the shell in the funky multi-colour design when it's ready to launch!

Version 0.3.3 of 8bit-Unity has now been released and it brings both Atari Lynx support and a cool new tech demo to show off what's been done. Lynx support was actually added in version 0.3, but we're reporting on this a little late and the latest version came out very soon after. There's also tracker support (chipper) and all the documentation has been updated.

Here's a quick look at the tech demos that are available at the moment...

8bit-Goblin is a point and click style Tech Demo introduced in release 0.3.3 (of 8bit-Unity). The code shows how to implement scene management, including: interactable objects, pickable items, scene animation

8bit-Grubs is an artillery style Tech Demo introduced in release 0.2.0 (of 8bit-Unity). The code shows how to use sprites and get/set pixel color on bitmaps.

You can get more information about these tech demos and even try them out in our online Atari Lynx emulator here: 8bit-Goblin and 8bit-Grubs.

However the fun doesn't end there! 8bit-Hub is a piece of hardware that's designed to work with the SDK. It will interface with the Atari Lynx and will provide a number of features (to be revealed later). Here's a sneak peek of the hardware...

So what are you waiting for! Go and download and starting coding for the Lynx. Don't forget to also check out the programming competition we are hosting - Lynx Programming Competition 2020

Here's a great installation video of the BennVenn Atari Lynx 2 LCD mod kit from Mark Fixes Stuff. Even if you've done the install already this video is worth a watch, but if you haven't then this guide will be a very useful reference. Mark goes on to install the LCD replacement kit, then does some comparisons of the old and new screens. It's professionally done and is quite entertaining, and the quality is...crystal clear! 😛

Our original installation guide can be found here - Installing and testing out the BennVenn LCD Mod for Atari Lynx