Powered by a 4 MHz 65C02 8-bit CPU and a custom 16-bit blitter, the Lynx was more advanced than Nintendo's monochrome Game Boy, released two months earlier.

Morse's son had asked him if he could make a portable gaming system, prompting a meeting with Mical and Needle to discuss the idea.

Epyx declared bankruptcy by the end of the year, so Atari essentially owned the entire project.

[9]: ch.2, 8  A 2009 retrospective interview with Mical clarifies that there is no truth to some early reports claiming that games were loaded from tape, and elaborates, "We did think about hard disk a little.

At Summer 1989 CES, Atari's press demonstration included the "Portable Color Entertainment System", which was changed to "Lynx" when distributed to resellers, initially retailing in the US at US$179.95 (equivalent to about $440 in 2023).

[14][failed verification] Lifetime sales by 1995 amount to fewer than 7 million units when combined with the Game Gear.

It has rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a power save option (which turns off the backlighting).

In 1993, Atari started shifting its focus away from the Lynx in order to prepare for the launch of the Jaguar;[17] a few games were released during that time, including Battlezone 2000.

After the respective launches of the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation caused the commercial failure of the Jaguar, Atari ceased all game development and hardware manufacturing by early 1996[18] and would later merge with JTS, Inc. on July 30 of that year.

[19][20] The Atari Lynx has a backlit color LCD display, switchable right- and left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with other units via Comlynx cable.

The fast pseudo-3D graphics features were made possible on a minimal hardware system by co-designer Dave Needle having "invented the technique for planar expansion/shrinking capability" and using stretched triangles instead of full polygons.

On March 13, 1998, nearly three years after the Lynx's discontinuation, JTS Corporation sold all of the Atari assets to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million.

[30] In 2008, Atari was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for pioneering the development of handheld games with the Lynx.