Battlewheels

Battle cars, a fight-to-the-death arena and a view straight from the cockpit, Battlewheels was a pretty bold idea for the year 1993 and a handheld console. And that is exactly how it played, like a title trying to squeeze the console down to its last byte.

You take the wheel of an armed vehicle and throw yourself into an arena where the only rule is to survive. From a first-person perspective you drive, maneuver and fire at opponents who crave exactly the same thing, to blast you to scrap. This blend of driving and combat, vehicular combat, was a genre that wanted to combine the adrenaline of racing with the satisfaction of destroying enemies.

The developers at Beyond Games reached for ambitions that, as a period description aptly notes, dangerously pushed the Lynx to its limits. Rendering a convincing cockpit view in real time on early-nineties handheld hardware was a technical nut to crack, and it is precisely this audacity that makes Battlewheels an interesting piece of the platform's history.

The game also supported ComLynx multiplayer, so arena battles could be fought against living opponents. And that was always the best way to experience a game like this, because nothing replaces the tension of a duel with a real person on the other console.

Today Battlewheels is more of a curiosity for fans of the battle-vehicle genre and Lynx collectors than a widely known classic. But as proof of technical courage and an effort to push the handheld beyond the boundaries of what was expected of it, it holds a firm place.

Why play: For technically ambitious battle-car combat from the driver's view that pushed the Atari Lynx to its limits, a treat for fans of vehicular combat.