Emulator handy Atari Lynx

handy — Atari Lynx

The Atari Lynx — the world's first colour handheld (1989), with hardware sprite-scaling and rotation — runs on EmulatorJS + handy (the Lynx libretro core), the second platform in the Handheld Consoles category after the Emulator-gambatte-Game-Boy.

Same bezel style — held up in class

The Lynx reuses the handheld bezel style: the device is held up in the foreground over the classroom photo (classroom.jpg), not a CRT on the wallpaper. The Lynx is a wide landscape unit (lynx.png, 2097×853, screen keyed to a transparent hole), bottom-anchored and sized to 75%. EJS draws into the screen hole; #game canvas { height: 100% !important; transform: scale(0.95); }. See Emulator-gambatte-Game-Boy for the full layer recipe — only the device image and the screen-hole coordinates differ.

The boot ROM

Unlike most of the EJS bundles, handy needs the Lynx boot ROM (lynxboot.img, 512 bytes) to start games — without it, nothing loads. It ships in the bundle and is handed to the core via genxBootEJS's biosUrl:

genxBootEJS({
  title: 'Atari Lynx',
  coreName: 'lynx',          // EJS resolves 'lynx' → handy
  biosUrl: 'lynxboot.img',
  defaultControls: { 0: { 0:{value:'z'}, 8:{value:'x'}, 3:{value:'enter'},
                          10:{value:'shift'}, 11:{value:'ctrl'},
                          4:{value:'up arrow'},5:{value:'down arrow'},6:{value:'left arrow'},7:{value:'right arrow'} } }
});

The handy stable core works fine — no nightly swap needed (unlike gambatte and vice_x128).

Controls

Arrows = d-pad, X = A, Z = B, Shift = Option 1, Ctrl = Option 2, Enter = Pause. The Lynx had no fixed orientation and games used A/B/Option however they liked, so each gamedoc spells out the per-game meaning. (handy also has a handy_rot option for the games meant to be played rotated — none of the bundled 10 are.)

Library

A showcase set leaning on the Lynx's colour and scaling, year-sorted: California Games (the pack-in), Chip's Challenge (a Lynx original — it predates the Windows version), Electrocop, Blue Lightning, Warbirds (all 1989 launch titles), Zarlor Mercenary, Klax, Todd's Adventures in Slime World, S.T.U.N. Runner, Rampart. Gamedocs at gamedocs/lynx/<key>.html. ROMs are .lnx (64-byte-header format the core reads directly).

Bundle layout

systems/lynx/
├── play.html            ← genxBootEJS wrapper (coreName: 'lynx', biosUrl)
├── controls.html
├── games.json
├── lynxboot.img         ← 512-byte Lynx boot ROM (required)
└── roms/
    └── *.lnx

The handy core lives once in systems/_shared-ejs/ejs/data/cores/handy-legacy-wasm.data.

Related

• Emulator-gambatte-Game-Boy — sibling handheld, same bezel style
• Emulator-VICE-family — the shared EmulatorJS gotchas
• Emulators — index