If you enjoyed Space Invaders and Galaga, you will definitely feel at home with Atomaders, but you will also enjoy the extras that Kraisoft Entertainment provided.

The story is pretty standard: you must liberate the planetary system of Leda Prime from invasion by alien cyborg ships. But who cares? The game is all about the simplistic game play from the classics with some interesting modifications like bonuses and weapons.

You operate a single ship at the bottom of the screen, while the enemy ships move about in the Space Invaders fashion, while also including some Galaga-like ships called Fighters that can swoop down to attack you directly. The cool thing is, each enemy you shoot down (aside from the Fighters) will drop a nice charging weapon type. Get four of these types, and you can shoot the weapon once. Each enemy is color coded, so if you shoot the red units, you get the Right Swing shot, which will shoot straight up until it hits an enemy, then swing to the right. Blue units provide Left Swing charges. Other units provide some of the cooler shots, like the Cluster shot or Spiral shot, or the awesome Crusher, which sucks all of the enemy units within a certain radius towards a single point in the center, destroying all of them in a very quick and cool looking attack.

To help in your defense, there are Barriers. These objects will stop enemy shots and also damage enemy units that fly into them. You can shoot them to move them up a little bit to encourage the lower enemies to do so. Of course, these Barriers don't survive too long if they take on too many hits, so they can be of strategic value for only a short time.

Also, There are mother ships that move across the top that you can shoot down. Doing so provides a bonus, either in the form of extra points or an extra life. There are shields that can protect you from a single attack and meteor showers that can be called in. There is even an item that will slow your enemies' movements to a crawl, allowing you extra time to attack them. Sometimes you can also get a Defence Launcher, which will automatically fire shots that home in on enemy fire, which can be very useful if you have it when you get the end bosses.

That's right, this game has end bosses. Each of the planets you encounter have you going through 11 levels of fighting enemies, and the next battle is against a major boss. This is some classic gaming right here, since you will be told where the weak points are on this boss. You just keep shooting and avoiding the retaliation to eventually defeat the boss and conquer that planet, opening up access to the next planet. Unfortunately you can't take any of your bonus shots with you into these battles.

As far as options are concerned, this game provides a few. You can adjust the sound and music volumes to your liking, as well as adjust the keys used for controls. This latter option is often missed in most independent games and yet including it provides just that much more polish to a game. You can also disable shadows, but I didn't feel that this really changed anything. I didn't notice a change except when battling the end bosses since the background isn't just space anymore, but maybe this option might provide better performance on slower PCs. One cool thing you can do is change whether your scores get posted online or not. There is a local high score list available for your computer so you can compete with friends and family, but you can also view the Worldwide Hall of Fame at Kraisoft's website and compete against the world!

Fans of classic gaming who want something to play on today's computers won't be disappointed with Atomaders. While you won't find the game play completely new, fans of this game won't mind and newcomers can expect a few cool things to find here.

Graphics: 8
The graphics are colorful and varied. The explosions and other animations are very fluid and the backgrounds and ships are beautiful to look at.

Sound: 8
The sound effects were just as varied as the graphics. I found the music to be quite a good tune, providing a decent pace to things without sounding stale. About the only thing I didn't like was dying, since hearing the same scream from the ejecting pilot a few times in a big fight can get annoying.

Game Play: 9
The controls were intuitive and simple, allowing anyone to pick up this game and play it immediately. Also, they were configurable in case you don't like the default selection, and the ability to use a keyboard, a mouse, or a joystick is a nice plus.

Options: 8
Mostly standard, but the online high score list can provide some nice competition. The inclusion of a keyboard mapping is a feature that may seem unnoticeable when it is available but is sometimes a problem in games that don't have it.

Concept: 8
Yes, it is a take-off on an old game, but with the extra features and polish, Atomaders really shines.

Fun: 8
Blasting enemies and motherships, grabbing power-ups, and fighting end bosses adds up to a load of fun!

Overall: 8
While the game play isn't completely novel, the game is really well done and provides hours of fun. There are a couple of campaigns to play through, each with a number of planets, each with a number of levels, so you have plenty of gaming in front of you with Atomaders.