This week 11 years ago the machine was shown to a privileged few behind closed doors at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. One of those privileged few turned out to be Jack Tramail, head of Atari, and the machine became... the Atari Lynx.

Sadly, despite being able to boast a full-colour backlit display and a few top games - including ace flight combat sim Blue Lightning and, would you believe, California Games - the Lynx didn't do as well as expected, even when its only competition in the handheld sector was Nintendo's monochromatic Game Boy.

There were issues concerning reliability, and it gobbled batteries like Pac Man, but perhaps the main reason it didn't succeed was that Atari were unable to throw enough marketing money behind it. Ironic really, as Epyx presumably offered it to Atari because their own pockets weren't deep enough to make a sufficient splash. And while we're talking irony, because the internal architecture was so similar, the few software publishers who supported the Lynx developed games for it using an Amiga - manufactured by Commodore, Atari's main rival at this time.

What Lynx did do was pave the way for Sega's colour portable console, the Game Gear, which, with its vast catalogue of software titles (Master System games were easily ported down) and street cred Sega branding, not to mention a nifty TV tuner add-on, managed to make a far more convincing argument for spending £150.

Lynx gradually dropped in price, was reduced in physical size to become the more pocket-friendly Lynx II and even benefited from exclusive games like Batman Forever and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but in a race in which they were always third, they fell even thirder. The few software houses that had supported Lynx lost interest and, eventually, so did Atari, deciding instead to concentrate on an alternative feline-themed machine, the Jaguar.

As for Epyx, their name was never heard of again. Except in folk tales, which ended: "And the moral of the story is, stick with what you're good at."