Delta Hero

Delta Hero is one of the most baffling and frankly bizarre titles in the Watara Supervision library. If you were to look at a static screenshot, you might reasonably assume that the developers at Bon Treasure were attempting to create a sweeping, portable RPG in the vein of Zelda or Sega’s Dragon Crystal. In fact, the visual similarities to Dragon Crystal are so blatant - from the blocky labyrinth walls right down to the main character's sprite - that it borders on a direct rip-off.

But the moment you press start, the RPG illusion shatters completely. Delta Hero is not an epic quest; it is a stressful, clunky, and incredibly short top-down maze chaser.

Gameplay

Rather than exploring a vast overworld or grinding for experience points, you are dropped into a surprisingly small, five-floor labyrinth. Your objective on each floor is straightforward but tedious: you must locate nine hidden money bags scattered around the maze and bring them to the exit, which is represented by a stylised Yin-Yang tile.

You are constantly racing against the clock. Your health meter doubles as a timer that continually drains away as you explore. To stay alive, you have to scrounge for bizarre restorative items strewn about the dungeon floors - loaves of bread, random bottles, and cups of tea.

Adding to the frustration is the game's utterly baffling control scheme. In almost any other top-down game from the 1990s, you simply walk over an item to pick it up. In Delta Hero, you must stand directly on top of the item, come to a complete stop, and hold down the 'B' button to collect it. It completely ruins the pacing of what is supposed to be a frantic race against time.

Combat and Exploration

Your hero is armed with a bow and arrow to fend off the generic assortment of roaming monsters, but combat is something you generally want to avoid. The walking speed is agonisingly slow, and the hit detection is unforgiving. Worse still, there are absolutely no invincibility frames (i-frames) in this game. If an enemy bumps into you, they don't just hit you once; they will rapidly melt your health bar for every fraction of a second they remain in contact with your sprite.

Exploration is also stunted. While the mazes are mostly visible from the start, certain pathways are walled off by secret doors. To find them, you either have to notice very slight graphical changes in the wall tiles or hunt down a pair of "X-ray glasses" that reveal the hidden routes.

Visuals and Audio

If you thought the system's notorious LCD ghosting was bad in racing games, Delta Hero proves it can ruin slower games, too. Because the maze is made of highly detailed, patterned blocks (again, ripped straight from Dragon Crystal), any movement causes the entire screen to smear into a headache-inducing gray blur. You practically have to stop walking just to let your eyes refocus and see what's in front of you.

But the true villain of Delta Hero is its soundtrack. The audio in this game is legendary among Supervision collectors for all the wrong reasons. Rather than a cohesive chiptune melody, the background music sounds like a toddler aggressively mashing the keys of a broken electric keyboard. It is a grating, atonal assault on the ears that will have you reaching for the volume dial within the first thirty seconds.

Ultimately, Delta Hero feels less like a finished game and more like a rushed tech demo. With only five short stages, no password system, and a completely squandered RPG aesthetic, it stands as a weird, quirky footnote for fans of obscure retro hardware.