| |
|
Once upon a time, in the beginning of the portable system wars, Atari dared challenge Nintendo. The system was in color, it had a larger, backlit screen, and it could "flip" to accomodate southpaws. Its main flaws, however, were that it ate batteries like pretzels, and it was too heavy. What killed it was its lack of third-party software and general incompetence on the part of Atari, as well as a dearth of RPGs and fighting games. A loyal community still exists, and many good games were made; just not as many as could have been. One of those games was Klax. The game involved holding the Lynx sideways (feel free to groan in 3... 2... 1...) as the tiles came down a ramp. You had to move a catcher to grab the tiles and drop them into a 5x5 chamber. To clear them out, you had to get a "Klax" by aligning three or more tiles of the same color horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Each wave got progressive harder as the goals got more difficult and the tiles faster. Some levels involve getting a certain number of Klaxes, a certain number of points, surviving a certain amount of tiles, etc. If you fill up the area, or drop a certain number of tiles, it's all over. The graphics are great considering that Klax was pretty much a launch title for the star-crossed unit. The gameplay works better than you'd think, and there's actual spoken dialogue. It sort of serves as an early tech demo of the system, which could do stuff that hadn't been done at that point (the Genesis and SNES were only then coming out, I believe). It's easily one of the reasons to get a Lynx, along with such things as a portable Rygar and Ninja Gaiden III. Since I come from a family of unrepentant Tetriholics, I give this game an easy 10. Get into this game, and you may agree... |
|
