Wings of Death - Thalion Software

This game is perhaps the first ever Thalion game I ever saw. It was 1990, I had happily been playing with my Spectrum computer working on a monchrome isometric engine. When I popped into the local computer shop for some 3" disks. When I walked in the shop assistant was just trying the new games that had arrived that day and as usual there was a crowd of kids looking on. As I looked at the screen the Speccy512 intro picture on the left, pixeled by Erik Simon, came up. My Jaw dropped. And that was only the first of a few reality checks that happened.

Anyone who knows anything about Speccy's knows the later ones also have the YM chip. And the other day I had been amazed by some David Whittaker tunes on my humble machine. In the showroom, the crystal clear WoD title music started..

It starts with a growl of "WINGS of DEATH" followed by an evil cackle.

(I wonder who's voice that was?).

Turining up the volume (much to the assistants annoyance) I listened counting the voices being played, knowing there are only 3 hardware channels... 1, 2, 3, What? No thats impossible! - Digi zak's in games had arrived!

Even on this screen there are rasters increasing the colour depth!

More rasters to come as the game menu opens, switching to the options menu I noticed there was a difference between what it displayed on the machine I was using, and the one also being used next to me! This is the first time I had seen the direct difference between an FM and an STe

As you select start, the first level loads and there is this annoying low rate sample saying "Please Wait" (The game loads so fast on Emulators that you might not get to hear it!) But by the time the level has loaded you are fired up. What is also cool is if you have enough memory the level stays in memory for the next go!

The scrolling (on both computers) is very smooth compared to other vertical shoot 'em-ups (Look at 1943!) Here on the left is the first level, there are several different weapons to choose from, each picked up as a powerup of the body of a dead enemy! Here the weapon is Triangles, a fast weapon, with a small character (each weapon changes the size of your character so the ease at which you are hit!)