Picture a speedboat crammed with weapons hurtling across the water's surface while you deliver dubious packages to dubious clients. That's exactly what Hydra on the Atari Lynx is, a hybrid of racing and shooter that squeezed the maximum out of the console's capabilities.
The premise is simple and addictive. You move in a semi-pseudo-3D perspective, overtaking rivals while firing at obstacles and enemies that get in your way. For delivered packages you earn money, which you then spend on upgrades to your vessel, from stronger weapons to a better engine. This loop between driving, shooting and gradual upgrades gives the game a drive that wasn't a given on a pocket console from the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Lynx was a technical marvel in its day. A color backlit display, hardware sprite scaling and a rotatable screen made it a markedly more capable machine than the rival Game Boy. Hydra is among the titles that liked to show off these capabilities: the speed effect, the enlarging of objects approaching the player and the smooth sense of movement over water looked striking on the small screen.
In genre terms the game fits into the wave of pseudo-3D arcade racers, where it wasn't just about finishing first but about surviving and getting rich. It's a title played in short, intense bursts, ideal for the nature of a pocket console. The difficulty grows, the wallet is forever empty, and you keep coming back for another try.
Today Hydra is more of a curiosity for collectors and Lynx fans than a broad classic, but that is precisely what makes it an interesting piece in the mosaic of what handheld gaming could do at the start of the nineties. It's proof of the ambitions of a platform that was ahead of its time but failed commercially.
Why play: For a brisk combination of racing and shooting that shows just how much the underrated Atari Lynx could mine out of a small screen.
Game 21 of 30 for Atari Lynx
