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                                LYNX DEMOS?!
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"What?" maybe will  be your first word, and I say it again... Demos on the Atari
Lynx, yes, there are demos around on that handheld!

Here is just a short introduction. Since  development kits  for several consoles
were released also  the demo scene  focused on them. Esp. the SNES was known for
strange demos, made by  people of the  Amiga and PC demoscene mainly, they don't
wanted to create some games or something, nope, they just tried out their skills
in porting some effects from their computers to these machines.

Ok, it isn't as easy, because  you need cartridges and there  aren't many people
interested in them, but since the emulation-run started on the PC, any user with
interest in those  digital art files with a fast  machine is able to  check this
stuff out, esp. because it is going harder  and harder. PSX demos, demos for N64
and the Dreamcast are  waiting to be  explored and since  I just found some SNES
demos on the Net, I'm interested  to see what those freax did on  other consoles
as well...

Unfortunately the  LYNX doesn't offers a  big range of  freak coders. Just a few
ones are trying to release some games for free, but after some time I found also
several demo files. Sure, they were written for the development of games mainly,
but there are a few files you can compare with oldschool demos on the ST as well
and here comes a little check up..

The most (or all) of those demo files were done by BASTIAN SCHICK, also known as
42BASTIAN, who is  working on games too. I checked them out  with the HANDY LYNX
emulator on my PC, and except a few screen's they're running fine.

Untill now I just recovered only one screen you can call a demo at all. The most
screens I got so  far presenting routines, written  over the past 8 years by the
mentioned guy. It is  obvious that  he's coming from the ST scene  because those
effects are coming from oldschool ST demos.

Several unnamed little  screens are showing up some of the following things: you
can  see a  realtime  mandelbrot  in  greyscales, several screens  with vertical
rasters, moving vertical rgb  rasterbars, a tunnel made of  line circles (in the
way of the dots tunnels on ST), demos where you can move sprites, another screen
that reminds to Qwix and is showing some bumping sprites as well.
And to give you a little impression here is a screenshot of the small mandelbrot
screen...

As said above all  those screens showing just one routine. Later on I found also
also a screen that brings a blue raster background together with a filled vector
cube that looks a bit strange because he seems  to have problems  with the right
side, cause the edges aren't right.

Last but not least there is one real small demo, that also  features some bitmap
graphix as well, that seems to be written by 42BASTIAN too. This screen features
three effex. At first  there is a  background made of vertical rasters. In front
of this  a grey filled  vector cube  is turning  around (also with the  clipping
problem). After  short time  a very nice PHOBYX logo is scrollin  upwards behind
the vector and starts to distort in the background. So it is disting  and moving
out on the right  side of the screen. The grey vector cube  is going smaller and
smaller and cames back to full size with green colours.
And that's it... Here I have at last a screenshot of it...

All those screens  don't feature any music (too bad) and no information files as
well. They're all just a few KB in size and if you have the HANDY on your PC (if
you have one...) than you  should check  them out. It isn't brainblasting in any
way but it's interesting to see what some people  are trying to  do with Atari's
little handheld.

If there  is someone outthere  who has more  demos for  the LYNX in *.O or *.LNX
format, please write to me at moondog@atari.org

I saw a screenshot of  a Wolfenstein routine that is included on the "S.I.M.I.S"
multigame cartridge. Looks very interesting and
If you're interested  in those screens and you don't know where to get them, you
can write me as well. I haven't given the  url's in this article because I don't
know where I found those screens at all. I surfed through many sites in the last
days and weeks and it wasn't easy to find them... Anyway, I will create a little
package and will email  it to anyone who shows interest. All you need is a HANDY
LYNX emulation or the development kit to run those demos!

That's it for the first time...

.tSCc.                                                                   moondog
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