Atari's last two machines both arrived with big promises. The Lynx (1989) was the first handheld with a colour screen, bigger and hungrier than the Game Boy. The Jaguar (1993) called itself the first 64-bit console, and sold badly enough to end Atari's hardware story.
We have about 80 Atari Lynx games and about 70 Atari Jaguar games on My Abandonware.
Atari Lynx games
Lynx games are small files, mostly 100 to 250 KB. Use Beetle Lynx in RetroArch, or Mednafen: both need the small boot ROM of the handheld.
- Beetle Lynx: a core for RetroArch, on every system. It comes from Mednafen, which came from Handy, the first Lynx emulator.
- Mednafen (Windows, Linux) runs the Lynx on its own, from the command line.
Both want lynxboot.img, a 512-byte file from the handheld, in the system folder of RetroArch or in Mednafen's own folder. See our page about BIOS files to get it.
Our Lynx games come as .lnx files inside a zip: open one and play. Some games are played with the handheld turned sideways, like Klax or Gauntlet: the screen looks wrong until you rotate the picture in the emulator's options. Mednafen and Beetle Lynx both do it.
Atari Jaguar games
BigPEmu is the Jaguar emulator: free, fast, and the only one that runs the whole library, cartridges and CD games alike.
BigPEmu, written by Rich Whitehouse, was the first emulator to run every Jaguar game, at full speed, with the extras of the machine: the Jaguar CD, the VR headset that never shipped, and the JagLink cable between two machines. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and also exists as a paid version on Steam and on iPhone.
Most cartridge games need no BIOS: open the .j64 or .jag file from our zip and play. Our Jaguar archives are 1 to 4 MB for a cartridge.
A dozen of our Jaguar files are much bigger, several hundred MB: those are Jaguar CD games, the CD add-on of the console. BigPEmu reads their disc images too. Open the .cue file when the archive holds one.
The Jaguar controller had a numeric keypad, like the Intellivision, and games used it for weapons or options. BigPEmu draws it on screen and lets you map it to your gamepad; the game's manual says what each key does.
I need help!
We do not provide support for running abandonware games. Both machines have small, devoted communities.
Ask on the Atari Lynx or Atari Jaguar forums of AtariAge. The Emulation General Wiki follows what each emulator can do.
Checked in October 2026 against each emulator's own documentation and, where it exists, its source code. Game counts and file sizes come from our own catalogue. These guides were drafted with the help of an AI assistant and checked by hand before publishing. If something here is out of date, tell us.