You read that headline right, Chase is a new game for the Atari Lynx handheld. The Atari portable was released way back in 1989, discontinued in 1995 (at least by Atari themselves). That has not stopped independent homebrew developers from taking up the reigns and making their own games for it. One such new game, released late in 2022, is called Chase. If you enjoy Pac-Man then you will want to continue reading.
Pac-Man made his debut in Japan arcades in 1980. Who knows, without cheating, what Pac-Mans Japanese name is? Okay, back to the article, Namco literally started the maze craze (awesome two-player game on Atari 2600 by the way) that never really took off outside yellow dot gobblers. Sure, we got entries like Lock ‘n Chase, Mr. Do, and to a lesser extent, Dig Dug, for the most part, maze games like Pac-Man just did not take off.
Of course, with as popular as the Pac-Man franchise was, did gamers really need other companies attempting to just rip off the style? I know there are many more maze games out there than what I named, just I can’t name any of them (I was more an Asteroids fan).
Chase has a difficulty curve that is steeper than that of Pac-Man though. You are still running around a maze collecting everything in it while avoiding enemies. At first, you are only avoiding one enemy, complete a few levels and another is added.
What is interesting here is, you can bait the enemies to come after you, they don’t seem to be on set paths.
Early on the mazes are dirt simple. Later, they get much more complicated and challenging. That is enhanced with more enemies to avoid, scrolling, and tons more items to collect.
The ROM is available for free to use in an emulator or, if you have a flash cart, play on your Atari Lynx portable.
Thanks to Retro Veteran for the heads up on this one
