Although Game Boy dominated the portable console market for most of the 90s, there were some challengers who tried their best. Especially Sega's Game Gear, which many may remember mainly because of the small TV tuner you could buy, and of course the, for the time, very cool colour screen. But in fact, the 16-bit Atari Lynx could almost have been Sega's first portable console instead. This was recently revealed in an interview with old Sega USA veterans Tom Kalinske and Al Nilsen.
"The interesting thing and we haven't talked about it a lot over the years - Tom, I'm not even sure you know this - Game Gear was almost not our first handheld system. When we were getting ready to launch Genesis, Sega was in discussions with Atari about possibly marketing the Atari Lynx under the Sega brand. So when we were building the booth for the Consumer Electronics Show in 1989 where we launched Genesis, I had a separate area and display stand all set, just in case the decision was made for us to go and carry the Lynx. But that never went through and Atari did that."
The full interview is well worth watching and the two are still razor sharp despite their age. You can check it out here.
<social>https://youtu.be/gdc7D-73xO8</social>
Do you remember the Atari Lynx and maybe you owned one at the time?