My Played Video Games Review: Sub-Terrania for the Sega Genesis

Sub-Terrania is a multi-directional shooter developed by Zyrinx (Danish developer studio) and published by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1994.

Space shooters are not that popular in my country but I played them nonetheless. They offer a welcome respite from the fighting games and RPGs that I mostly spend my time playing.

The Story

Monstrous aliens have invaded a critical subterranean mining complex of a planet colony.

Fly an advanced prototype fighter through deep caverns to rescue the trapped miners and blast the aliens into kingdom come! Wanted: lightning reflexes, deep concentration and balls of steel. Fight to stay hovering as the strong gravity pulls your ship towards the surface. Wreak mass carnage against those alien monsters and dodge the hot blasts of enemy beams! Get some hidden gear to transform your fighter into an aquatic vessel for underwater combat!

The Graphics and Sound

The graphics in this game are top-notch for the Sega Genesis. The video in the intro opening looks pretty good, though a little grainy. The enemies are surprisingly detailed. The walls and backgrounds look pretty detailed too. On the whole, the graphics are excellent considering this is a 16-bit console.

The sound effects are well done mostly. The explosions sound kind of realistic, though a little louder would be nice. The shooting and the ship engine's sounds were also pretty nice too.

The music in this game is some of the best 16-bit music I have ever heard. Sub-Terrania has some terrific atmospheric techno music. The sound quality is great. Overall, the quality of the music in this one outshines the music found in most other Genesis games.

The Gameplay

In Sub-Terrania, you have to fly into underground areas to rescue groups of people, finding the submodule, and then going back to your starting point. One thing really unique about it is that you can move in any direction instead of one direction as in the usual shooters. What makes this game really hard is that you have to deal with the gravity and save on fuel at the same time. However, there are fuel containers littered around each level that you can gas up when you run out of fuel. But, occasionally, you do not have time to get to them. Therefore, if you run out of fuel, your fighter ship will fall onto the cavern walls and explode.

One thing that aids the gameplay is that some levels have metal bars where you can place your ship at the end in order to position it without using gas. This really helps when fighting some enemies. Throughout the game, there are weapon boosts scattered about. Another hard aspect of this game is that aiming at some enemies is rather irritating because you have to keep on going against gravity while trying to focus on enemies. Also, reading the mission reports before starting a mission gives ideas that help a little bit. Overall, this space shooter has very unique gameplay, but the difficulty level pisses most gamers off.

The replay value of this game is kind of average due to the difficult challenge.

My Verdict

Sub-Terrania is a great space shooter with a unique gameplay style and good story. The difficulty brings down the rating of this game but the music was the best part. The graphics are great. The replayability is not desirable though due to the hard difficulty level of this game. Overall, Sub-Terrania is a rather good shooter. Any retro game shooter fan should just give it a try.

Go ahead and try it on the venerable Sega Genesis/Mega Drive or play it on your favorite emulator.

Let's keep on gaming in the free world!