The Game Boy Era Is Over

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Originally Posted by SpoDaddy

There's some serious revisionist history going on here. The reason Game Boy always won was because it had better games that were better suited to portable play.

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Tetris.

Name another.

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Originally Posted by John Cena

um, no.
Tetris carried it for quite some time, and then teh pokemans showed up. My memory is foggy, but I'm pretty sure pokemon saved the Gameboy from a death knell.

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Pokemon came out in like fucking 1998 or something.
There were no good GameBoy games until it was out for like at least 3 years. It was out for like 5 years before Zelda came out, 6 years before Donkey Kong, and celebrating its 10 year birthday before Pokemon and Wario Land 2 hit.

They shovel a thousand games a year out for 10 years and you can count the classics on one hand, and you want to tell me that software won that war?

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Originally Posted by SpoDaddy

What are all these great Game Gear and Lynx games everyone's crowing about?

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Shinobi 2.

I wasn't going to qualify Spodaddys question but on Lynx I would mention:
APB
Battle Wheels
Block Out
Blue Lightning
California Games
Checkered Flag
Dracula
Gates of Zendocon
Gauntlet Third Encounter
Klax
Ninja Gaiden 1&3
Rampage
Roadblasters
Rygar
Xenophobe
Zarlor Mercenary

I tried not to pad the list too much, but those are all games I still play every now and again.
I specifically left off the older arcade ports like Ms Pac man, Joust, Paperboy, Qix, and Astroids/Missle Command.
Pound for Pound, I think the Lynx had the best playable-shit ratio of the handhelds.

Electrocop so deserves a mention, too. It might be a little esoteric by today's stanards, but that game was really deep and fun, and totally fucking insane for a handheld in 1989.

And goddamn Stun Runner. That was the best home version of that game until like 2 years ago. Hydra was pretty rockin', too. And Raiden. And Battlezone 2000 if you knew the code to access the real game.

CyberVirus is also one of the best games on the system, but it was such a late release it's not really relevant to this discussion.

I could go on about the Lynx's library all day, really.

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Originally Posted by John Cena

Pound for Pound, I think the Lynx had the best playable-shit ratio of the handhelds.

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I think this is a very reasonable claim. And the reason is simple: 90% of the games, including ports of non-Atari games, were done in-house by Atari's really talented Lynx staff.

I didn't mention Stun Runner or Hydra because although they were fine back then, to play them now the framerate just doesn't hold up.
Raiden was another post death release, so I left that off. It was pretty good though.
My biggest problem with the Lynx was that although it had like 4096 colors available, I believe it could only do 16 on screen. That always made me scratch my head.

Raiden was very late, but I wouldn't call it post death. It along with Fat Bobby were among the last games that Atari actually licensed to be released on the system. But yeah, we can skip those since I was talking about how long it took Gameboy to get rolling.

Also, Hydra's framerate is very good. Same as Roadblasters. Stun runner's really not bad at all, either. You still get a great sense of speed. Hard Drivin is the one that really doesn't hold up because of frame rate.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

That came out before like 1993? None that I can think of off the top of my head, honestly. I guess the first Super Mario Land was alright. And Tetris, of course. Other than that I'm drawing a blank.

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Here's a list of some that I came up with that I had direct contact and knowledge of. I didn't include any games that I only a bit of, but thought were good, like the Final Fantasy Legends titles.

Alleyway (1989)
Bionic Commando (1992)
Boxxle (1989)
Castlevania (1989)
Castlevania II (1991)
Gargoyle's Quest (1990)
Metroid II (1991)
Super Mario Land (1989)
Super R.C. Pro-am (1991)

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Originally Posted by John Cena

I wasn't going to qualify Spodaddys question but on Lynx I would mention:

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And with that list, you've damn near listed everything that's worth playing on the Lynx, and there's the problem. Well, even then, I'd argue a few of those don't belong, like Gauntlet 3rd

Could be wrong, but I thought Atari ended the lynx in 96. Telegames released Raiden and Fat Bobby in 97.
We'll have to agree to disagree on Hydras framerate.

Weren't Castlevania 1 and 2 on GBA pretty much garbage? I already mentioned Mario Land, but I don't think many people would consider that one "great."

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Originally Posted by John Cena

Could be wrong, but I thought Atari ended the lynx in 96. Telegames released Raiden and Fat Bobby in 97.

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This is true, Atari did shut down its lynx first party releases in 96, but it was before they ended 3rd party licenses (which they then opened up in 99 anyway, but still). They were officially licensed 3rd party games.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Weren't Castlevania 1 and 2 on GBA pretty much garbage?

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I wouldn't have listed them if I thought they were.

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I already mentioned Mario Land, but I don't think many people would consider that one "great."

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Well, it might not be the best Mario game, but if we're comparing the game to the GameGear's library, it sure as hell is. I'd also place it, overall, higher than most of the Lynx library (as much as I loved the thing).