The Atari Lynx was way ahead of its time - It was the premier 16-bit handheld and the first to feature color graphics. Backlit, too! It also boasted very impressive sound for this era.

Some other cool features: Buttons on both the top and bottom of the face (allowing for left-handed and portrait-oriented play), sprite rotation and scaling (years before the Super Nintendo had Mode 7 ability), and multiplayer with up to 8 connected handhelds at a time (another first - 8 player co-op hadn't been achieved before on a home gaming system).

However, it was running against Nintendo's absolutely unstoppable Game Boy at the time... Atari quickly lost the battle. This was due in part because the Lynx was double the price and ate through six AA batteries in 4 hours or less! Also, the games could only be built on Amiga computers (Amiga was the original maker of the platform), which made for an odd development space.