"The stunning shoot' em up epic which hurls you into the deepest regions of viscious Delta space and the fight for your life!"
Delta is a
side-scrolling shoot-em-up which was released on the
Commodore 64 in
1987. It was created by
Stavros Fasoulas, famous for
Sanxion and
Quedex (which were also developed for the
C64). The
game features
SID music by the musical genius,
Rob Hubbard. It was originally published by
Thalamus (of
Creatures and
Hawkeye fame). Delta was later re-released as part of Thalamus' '
The Hits 1986-1988'
bundle.
"Screens and screens of death-dealing destruction and mayhem."
The story focuses around the
plight of the
Terran Empire, who's lives are being threatened by the
Hsiffies, "nasty yellow,
buck-toothed, slimy
aliens, who
cheat at
poker, mistreat their
mothers and jump red lights", as described by the manual. In an effort to deter the
threat, an
elite squadron named
DAMOCLES has been reformed, and as a member of the group, it's your job to
obliterate as much of the Hsiffan
attack fleet as possible.
The game takes place over 32
levels, and you have the opportunity to
upgrade your weapons along the way -
destroy a whole attack formation, collect
credits, and pick up
weapon icons which you can afford, depending on the number of credits you have.
Weapon upgrades include more bullets,
multiple fire, and the interestingly named '
Fish Weapon' (or '
pulse-lasers', to the
layman). Featuring some obligatory
parallax scrolling, Delta is a reasonably pretty game, and is also a good
challenge to
shoot-em-up fans (but maybe a bit
frustrating and
difficult for anyone else).
A sequel called
Armalyte was created by
Cyberdyne Systems, which is regarded as the better of the two games.