Genre: Arcade
Developer: Tengen
Publisher: Atari

Looking to explore new corridors within his medium, Ed Logg decided to try his hand at a pseudo-3d title, several years before games like "Wolfenstein 3d" would arrive on the scene. The result is Xybots, and its scrolling third-person action translates almost perfectly to the Lynx! While the sprites aren't quite as detailed, the wall shading and patterns look great. At a 160x102 resolution, there naturally was no way to display the map permanently on-screen-- but when revealed via a button hold, it is easy to read and digest at a quick glance.

The original arcade game's music, with its wind pipe-like percussion, had an almost funk or jazz sound to it. When converted to the Lynx's buzzy and gritty chip though, those same melodies adopt an almost sinister quality, which takes the game's atmosphere to a whole new level! The eery opening to the third level tune, or the background whine to the second stage's song, are positively hair raising, and really make the world feel like an abandoned space station. The game's sound effects are highly functional and do a good job of communicating actions taking place in the game world.

In Xybots, the player explores a maze while shooting enemies and collecting power-ups. This Lynx port's control scheme is more playable than even the arcade original's spinning joystick, as holding the "B" button and pressing the d-pad triggers rotation. Holding down "Option 2" displays the map, and in a stroke of design inspiration, the whole game is playable with the map shown-- meaning the player can navigate the maze at the same time! Just like the arcade version, there are buyable power-ups after each level: make sure to stock up on the slow energy drain one!

In 1987, the third-person shooter hadn't been invented yet-- so its peculiar-at-the-time gameplay meant that Xybots was not an arcade success. But brought to the Lynx and through modern eyes, it's something of a formulaic masterpiece, marrying the maze-like power dot-management of "Pac-Man" to something like "Gears of War". The super atmospheric music and the graphics which absolutely show off the Lynx's impressive power-- it compares favorably to the Amiga version for Ed's sake-- stack on top to make this one impressive title. It even supports two-player via the "ComLynx" cable! If there is a gap in the dungeon floor, it's that the player movement is just a tad on the slow-side.