This is a conversion of the infamous Commodore 64 shooter, Delta. It was inexplicably re-titled as “Delta Charge!” by Thalamus and was first released for the ZX Spectrum in 1990 – very late in the machine’s initial lifetime.

Although Delta Charge! is well-programmed, with beautiful presentation, it suffers from the same problems as the original, in that it is so bloody difficult! Memorising the wave patterns, and the destructive walls and obstacles, is really what you have to do to get anywhere in this game. Which is a hard thing to ask of any player…

While it was always good to see conversions of good, old games, this one came too late to make much of an impact on the Spectrum‘s end-of-life status.

Whether this is any good to play now, or not… Remains to be seen. I’d say that it is, as it’s a good example of a ‘pure’ horizontally-scrolling shooter on the Spectrum. Don’t expect much in terms of colour, or laughs, and you might get something out of it. 🙂

More: Delta on Wikipedia
More: Delta Charge! on World of Spectrum