Now you might consider you lucky, others may consider you the unluckiest person alive. At the moment, as your ship careers through deep space, you may well side with the former. You will soon change your mind.
Delta Space is a mysterious section of the Universe. Very little of it has been explored. Well, the buses were rather irregular so no-one ever quite got around it.
Those who did get to see the place, usually because they fell asleep on the way home from the pub, reported a system of five planets which were all part of the Aalan Empire, based on the largest planet of the system.
Each of the planets is populated by intelligent forms of life. None of them have heard of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. However, they being militarily weak, the fascist planet of Aala found no trouble whatsoever in marching in, crunching the daffodils and nicking all the kids' sweets.
It seems they also had a strange affinity for grabbing all the benches by the pool before you could get down there in the morning.
Now they have set their sights on somewhere else, somewhere more distant, somewhere far more beautiful. No, not Stansted Airport, but the Planet Earth - that radiant blue pearl in the black fabric of space. Not slow on the uptake, though, the Planet Earth of the 23rd century is more than aware of the imperialistic threats of the overbearing Aalans. Long-
The plan is to liberate and ally with the four smaller planets of the system, relying heavily on the activities of the resistance movements of the oppressed planets to discreetly place extra weapons pods along the chosen attack path.
Once the planets' defences have been destroyed, bypassed, conquered and quite unreservedly slapped on the wrist by the human force, the governor of the planet, usually exceptionally large, must be confronted and blasted.
This must be done for each of the four planets. Then they must be flown through again so that the remnants of the Aalan symphatising population can be wiped out. I think one of the planets may well have been called Dresden.
All well and good, but soon after the attack was launched it all went tragically wrong. The crafty Aalan fleet sneaked up behind the human fleet, shouted boo and blasted them to kingdom come. This is where my original thought on the question of luck comes in. You see, you survived, initially, by a blinding stroke of good luck. Then as you slowly spin through deep space contemp
It soon becomes too late to find the toilet as you realise you are the unluckiest man alive, but you have to live with it as you warily fly into the greedy sights of the enemy fighters. It is entirely up to you to save the world, you poor schmuck.
The more aware of you out there will have twigged that this actually translates into an eight-
The game is very much in the style of R-Type, even down to the weapon that increases its power the longer you depress the fire button. If you tell the fire button that Is mother has died the gun gets really powerful.
The gameplay takes it a step further by animating parts of the scenery to make some areas of the level more of a puzzle-
The gameplay is extremely fast, decisions have to be made and reactions cannot afford to be slow, and this will make the game seem nearly impossible for the first few goes. But the few things you learn at each attempt can be used to gradually progress further into the game.
After a while each session will take you a little bit further. This style of gameplay means the challenge is high but the interest and addictiveness are maintained as each game reveals a little bit more to tease the player into another game.
The graphics are of a very high quality, the ship animates superbly, there are a wide variety of aliens, and the between level screens are up to Psygnosis standards.
Sound effects give a thumping soundtrack but the effects are very good, if a little below the standard of the other elements in the game. My only reservation is that you have to wait well over a minute after losing your third life to be able to start again. This ruins the continuity and doesn't do much for your patience.
This game is a conversion from the C64 original, and they managed to maintain the standards that made that version so playable. If you miss buying this you may well be laughed at by small children.