Delta 4 was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 software developer created by Fergus McNeill, writing and publishing interactive fiction

Interactive fiction

Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...

.

Delta 4 designed games between 1984

1984 in video gaming

-Notable releases:* May 10, King's Quest , the first animated adventure game, the first in the King's Quest series, and the first to use the AGI engine.* June 4, Nintendo releases Donkey Kong 3...

 and 1987

1987 in video gaming

-Notable releases:* January 14, Nintendo releases Zelda II: The Adventure of Link in January for the Famicom Disk System in Japan only. The game would go unreleased in America for nearly two years afterwards.* February 20, Konami releases Contra...

. Some were self-published, others were released by CRL Group, Piranha or Silversoft. Delta 4 were also credited with co-publishing Jonathan Nash's tape magazine YS2

Your Sinclair

Your Sinclair or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum.-History:...

, issues 2 and 3.

History

Delta 4 was formed by McNeill with a few friends whilst still at school. Their debut text adventure games were the Dragonstar trilogy ("...like Classic Adventure

Colossal Cave Adventure

Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...

but without the interesting bits.") and two Holy Joystick comedy adventures, self-published in 1984. Gilsoft's The Quill

The Quill

The Quill is a program to write home computer adventure games. Written by Graeme Yeandle, it was published on the ZX Spectrum by Gilsoft in December 1983...

was the design software.

Their first critical success was Bored of the Rings, inspired by the Harvard Lampoon novel of the same name

Bored of the Rings

Bored of the Rings is the title of a paperback parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. This short novel was written by Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney, who later founded National Lampoon...

. Published in 1985, it received a Sinclair User

Sinclair User

Sinclair User, often abbreviated SU, was a magazine dedicated to the Sinclair Research range of home computers, most specifically the ZX Spectrum...

Classic award. They also published Robin of Sherlock.

Games developed

• Sherwood Forest (Delta 4, 1984)
• The Dragonstar Trilogy (Delta 4, 1984)
• Quest for the Holy Joystick (Delta 4, 1984)
• Return of the Holy Joystick (Delta 4, 1984)
• Bored of the Rings (Delta 4/CRL Group, 1985)
• Robin of Sherlock (Silversoft, 1985)
• Galaxias (Delta 4, 1986)
• The Colour of Magic (Piranha Games, 1986)
• The Boggit
  The Boggit
  The Boggit: Bored Too is a text adventure game by Delta 4 released in for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum home computers. The game is a parody of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel The Hobbit and of the earlier game based upon it also called The Hobbit...
  
  (CRL Group, 1986)
• The Big Sleaze (Piranha, 1987)
• Murder Off Miami (CRL Group, 1987)