Thanks to Carl from Songbird Productions for the discount code that made this review possible. Sorry it took a while!
Title: Microvaders
System: Atari Lynx
Price: $69.99
Release Date: 2024
Story
In this Atari Lynx scorechaser, there’s actually a vague story here. Pretty typical “bad aliens show up, destroy them all as they attack us” story, but still one that pops up every ten stages to introduce the increased difficulty.
But yes, I’m reviewing an Atari Lynx physical cartridge game in 2026. The story of this game being made is way more interesting than what you get in the game, and the gist of it basically comes down to a small shooter minigame in some unreleased word-themed puzzler named Lexis getting significantly expanded into a full blown standalone Galaga-esque game. Despite being far different to the minigame in Lexis, the Analogue Pocket I played this on categorized this as Lexis in the system library, so if this is somehow a ROM Hack of Lexis, this is beyond impressive.
Presentation
The only way you’ll be playing this cartridge is via an Analogue Pocket + Adapter like I am here, or on a real, unreliable Atari Lynx console. If on the latter, you’ll be playing this in the system’s vertical mode. I refuse to buy a Lynx to judge how this game looks on one, but on the Analogue Pocket with the Lynx screen filter, the game is very colorful with the enemies and their bullets being real easy to see, preventing this game from encountering the usual issue handheld shooters could have where it was near impossible to see a shot on a blurry screen. The green outline your ship gets now and again also helps make it easy to see where you are, too.
The visuals are pretty darn good for the Lynx, and the music is not that bad either, considering how the Lynx is a console I barely consider to have functioning music to begin with. The tune during gameplay is pretty catchy, the title screen theme is pretty memorable, and the other songs are fine. Sound effects have the punch they need for a shooter like this, and don’t suffer from the weirdness of some attack sounds other Lynx games (Ninja Gaiden III, Scrapyard Dog) have.
Gameplay
In Microvaders you have a choice between Easy and Normal difficulty modes, and it took me a while to guess the differences between the two. I say guess, because the manual does nothing at all to inform you of the difference. I think it ultimately changes up the intensity of the opposing enemies and the speed of your shot, with Easy mode making things a lot slower and quicker to get into the hang of things, while Normal has enemies and their shots flying at you a lot quicker.
Either way, your high score is shared across both difficulties, so you really just have to stick with the one you prefer more. I didn’t notice more points being awarded on Normal, which is a shame as that would be a good incentive to challenge yourself. Luckily, you have in game achievements that you can unlock over the course of your runs, but you’ll only be able to see their icons after waiting around on the title screen, and even then you won’t have any idea what unlocked them; the manual only includes vague hints. Still, try to get them all!
With that said, what is the main gameplay of Microvaders, and why dodge around it? Truth be told, it’s your typical Invaders/Galaga like, where each stage consists of waves of enemies you must shoot down before they take you out. You can fire multiple shots on-screen, and even gain power ups that increase your firing rate, detonate a bomb, or even provide temporary invincibility. That said, nothing the enemies drop will make things particularly crazy, so you never feel overpowered. Some stages have few enemies, while others have multiple waves of weaker ones, and after each 10th stage you get a cutscene that you can skip to on the next play so you don’t have to do the entire 40 stage game in one sitting.
That’s a very good thing, since Microvaders is real difficult, and the simplistic look hides just how devious this one can get. Some of the enemy patterns make firing shots at them really tough, and often the best strategy I found was to shoot them as they entered the screen before they could assemble in formation. Needless to say, you will be kept on your toes trying to reach the next batch of stages, and you have infinite continues to keep at it until you eventually do. (with each continue sending you back to the 11th, 21st, etc stage) That helps make Microvaders a lot more engaging for me than most of these handheld invader-likes, since each stage feels like a mini puzzle to solve and it feels pretty darn satisfying to bowl over multiple stages in a row without taking a hit.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Microvaders is a simple scorechaser that’s more engaging than you might expect it to be thanks to the difficulty of the clever stage layouts. While it’s a bummer both the Easy and Normal difficulties share a high score, the fact the game saves them at all is quite impressive, let alone the fact you can even save your progress without a password. In-game achievements too make for a fun extra challenge, especially in the whole trying to figure out how to unlock them aspect.
Considering how tiny the Lynx library was, it didn’t get that many shooters, and the ones I’ve played before Microvaders from Lynx were generally mediocre, so it was real nice for Microvaders to hook me the way it did. Playing for score makes it real fun to see how far I can get without losing all my lives, and the fact I can just go stage-by-stage to beat the game meant I had a decent incentive to try to make it past each new set of ten stages and see what tricky waves came next to figure out
Obviously being a physical only Lynx game, the price is really darn high especially with current market conditions, and only being able to get played on a Lynx or Analogue Pocket makes it tricky to recommend for anyone who doesn’t have those platforms, and almost certainly ensures the amount of readers who can even play this game are very few. I can’t tell you to go out and buy one of those consoles just to play this, but if you have one of those systems already, have exhausted a lot of the usual Lynx games in the genre and want something a bit more old school and score-focused (and to support an indie dev!), Microvaders isn’t a bad pick at all, and a pretty fun challenge.
I give Microvaders a 6 out of 10.