You've heard that we've been celebrating the 30th Birthday of Atari Lynx. You probably even read about the programming competition that we've been running. Well now you can hear all about the winners of this competition! We also have a couple of other very cool announcements for Lynx fans, so read on!

So even though Atari Gamer wasn't at PRGE in person, with the help of Mark/Space and their Project Argon initiative (an Android app that lets you easily select and play retro games from a library of online ROMs), we still had a big presence with our posters and display stand for all to see.

All of the Atari Lynx 30th Birthday Programming Competition games were available to be played using the Project Argon app on various devices, including phones, tablets and the big screen TV of course! Competition winners were announced by Super Nicktendo in a video he's put together especially for this event...

The results were very close and many games received very high scores. Well done to all of the competitors!

Here's a more detailed breakdown of the results from each of the judges, voting poll and social media points. Scores from judges were calculated using this points calculator, which took into account Creativity, Implementation, Gameplay and Replay as well as the Completeness of the game.

During this competition, Atari Gamer refrained from making too many comments about each of the game entries, but now it's over, here are a few lines about each one...

• 4TTUDE — This game started off looking very average but in the end the graphics really perked up and it looked really great. It's a nice concept and a cool idea for a game on the Lynx, however it's much too difficult and as a result becomes less interesting to play - in a way it's Batman Returns of puzzle games.
• Assembloids — Fun, fast, addictive. It's the kind of arcade action that the Lynx was built for, well done!
• Find a way to my heart — The simple nature of this game is great and the twist on the Minesweeper type gameplay is a nice touch, on its own it's a very small game, but bundled with say On Duty, it would make for a really cool addition to a Lynx cart.
• Growing Ties — From the first time we played this one, laughter ensued. Very well designed, fun to play, nice level progression, very cool!
• Lynx Quest — Technically this is a work of art! A game like this hasn't been seen on the Lynx, the graphics and music and controls are all amazing, sadly it wasn't quite finished and there was no real story, but if it keeps going the way it has been, this will be one of the best games on the Lynx once it's completed.
• Nutmeg — Nice graphics, very well polished, but it's a runner. This game needs to be made into a platformer, then it will really shine!
• On Duty — Amazing, really! This kind of game hasn't been seen on the Lynx before, the choice of colours is perfect, music is great, controls even better. It will be a treasure when available on cart.
• Sky Raider — We did say no ports in the rules, well this has been very borderline. A nice game, but there's something missing, it just doesn't keep us engaged, with a little more polish it will be a lot of fun.
• The Inside World — Awesome concept, good start at something that can turn out very cool, lets wait and see.
• Undergrounders — Still not sure what to make of it, it's a great concept/tech demo, but really does need more work.
• Ynxa — Another favourite, the way the story progresses is cool, ability to gain skills is awesome! The game is fun to play and needs a physical cart release for sure.

All-in-all this competition has been a tremendous success. It brought out a bunch of new developers for Atari Lynx, as well as getting some of the seasoned homebrewers putting their skills to test again. With the Project Argon app coming to market soon, these games will live on not only on original Lynx hardware, but on new devices, via emulation.

We've started a discussion thread over at Atari Age forums if you want to leave any feedback or comments... Wrapping it up - Atari Gamer 30th Birthday Programming Competition.

As a bonus, Songbird Productions has also announced two new games for Atari Lynx. Which will be available in January 2020. Sadly these are not Ultra Vore and Distant Lands, but something we've all seen already - Biniax 2 (a follow up to Biniax) and Xump. Hopefully they will be priced accordingly to how big these games are and not the usual $50-70USD.

So where to from here? Well the Sillyventure 2k19 Atari Lynx competition of course! Then we have all of next year to look forward to and Atari Gamer is already in the talks about a possible new programming competition, details of which will be revealed closer to next year!