Delta Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]

Developed Stavros Fasoulas and published by Thalamus in 1987. Here we have another shoot 'em up from Thalamus' stables, this time developed by Stavros Fasoulas (of Sanxion fame). The premise of the game centres around the disappearance of a number of merchant vessels in a region of space known only as "Delta". Naturally, these occurrences cannot go unnoticed and you put yourself forward to investigate. It doesn't take long to realise that an alien race, the Hsiffan Khanate, are responsible and it is your responsibility to destroy them. You must face waves of alien craft over a succession of 32 different levels, collecting power-ups as you advance. The power-up system requires you to destroy complete waves of opponents in order to earn a credit, which can be used at periodic intervals to collect new weapons. You will encounter multiple blocks suspended in space and the number of credits you hold determine which ones can be collected; the more credits you hold, the more blocks that are unlocked and available to collect. However, you can only collect one block from each group and all remaining blocks will turn grey and will cause your ship to explode if you collide with them. Power-ups are not permanent and many will run out over time, forcing you to spend credits to replace them. Some of the later stages become trickier to navigate if you run out of fire-power, forcing you to resort to evade enemies instead. Completing all 32 stages will result in the game looping back to stage 1, although you do get some victory music to accompany the action. Considering the game is quite challenging, the lack of a proper ending screen is a bit of a disappointment, but certainly not uncommon for many games of the time. Technically, the game is very accomplished for the time. The scrolling is super smooth and there are numerous sprites on-screen at any one time. Bob Stephenson produced some attractive graphics and Rob Hubbard penned some decent tunes. I wouldn't consider Delta to be a classic, but it's a solid shooter with a reasonably innovative power-up system and decent action. The game also wins bonus points for not being a multi-load title; 32 levels back-to-back is a solid chunk of space shooting action! #retrogaming