Atomic Cannon Pocket by Isotope244 Graphics, Price: $19.95
Reviewed April 2003

For those people who have never outgrown their love for tank games, Atomic Cannon Pocket should help satisfy their lust. If you’ve been a Snails fan, you should know that even though this game has similar game play, you won’t find any cute snails or humorous dialogs here. What you have is sturdy metal tanks with deadly destructive weapons getting nasty on each other!

Developed by Isotope 244 Graphics, Atomic Cannon Pocket brings back the classic tank sim game for the Pocket PC. The story behind the tank fight is that after global chaos, the environment is no longer safe for human soldiers to get in the battlefield; only machines are used to travel through harsh terrain and fight other machines. The tank-looking machine called Atomic Cannon is fitted to fire 50 types of weapons and is your only hope for victory. While it’s admirable for the game developer to give us a story, when your back is against the wall, the story is really secondary. The only thing that matters now is that you must destroy the other tank before it barrages you!

There are a total of 25 terrains with 5 weather effects in Atomic Cannon. You can have up to 16 players with 5 tanks on each team to start the slaughter. The dynamic terrains give your team a different location each time, which make the game interesting. You will have a number of moves in each battle, which allow you to reposition your tanks in offensive or defensive tactics. You can set up to 20 rounds in each battle; the tank that does the most damage wins the battle. The game gives you an incredible level of flexibility with 10 difficulty settings, Wind levels, Kickback levels, landscape types and more, which allow you to completely customize the game to your own playing style. The newly added radio-active weapons that have lasting effects on the terrains and enemies are great fun to play with. The multiplayer mode will for sure makes this game irrisistable.

Atomic Cannon Pocket showcases some realistic landscapes with destructible foregrounds and stylish backgrounds. The game can be played in both portrait and landscape modes. The newly added scrollable battle field feature adds a dynamic look to the visuals. You will see flat land, hills, plateaus, gullies and slopes with snow or grass cover on the surface. Different weather patterns like rain, snow or blue sky also add atmosphere to the environment. There is a collection of 50 different weapons, some do huge damage with a big warhead and others do small damage but fall like rain. You will enjoy discovering the effects these weapons have on enemy tanks and terrain. There is a command bar on the bottom of your game screen where you can select which weapon you want to use in each round, the power level and the angle as well as a move button and a fire button. You can control the game with your stylus or hardware buttons.

Not only will you see trails of missiles firing and smoking rising out of the target, you will also experience the realistic sound FX of these powerful weapons. Each weapon has its own special sound effects when it’s fired or when it hits the target, and you can choose to turn the sound on or off. Atomic Cannon Pocket for the Pocket PC currently supports ARM/Xscale processors as well as MIPS processor, and it takes only 1.9MB storage space and 4MB of memory to run.