Sub-Terrania

The game takes place in a side view underground environment. At all times, gravity is pulling down on the player's ship, which can work to the player's advantage to conserve fuel. The controls are similar to other gravity-based shoot 'em up games, like Gravitar and Thrust. The ship is rotated with the directional pad and the B button applies thrust in the direction it is facing.

A key difference compared to other games of this type is the addition of back thrusters, which allow the players to reverse thrust as they try to dodge enemy fire and maneuver their way through the game's hazardous landscapes. Its controls can be manually configured before the game is started.

On an off-world asteroid, a red line wipes the sky as headquarters explodes. Hostile alien forces have invaded the vital subterranean mining colony. Workers are trapped in crevices and chasms, helpless against the clouds of radioactive dust swirling toward them. An experimental attack fighter is the only weapon powerful enough to repel the alien attack. A lone pilot has been charged with the task of defeating the aliens and rescuing the trapped miners.

Sub-Terrania was the first game developed by Zyrinx, a small studio formed by people who had been active in the demoscene during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most of them were prominent members of the demogroups "Crionics" and "The Silents". Their 1991 Amiga demo "Hardwired" shares many of the visual effects and styles later used in their Mega Drive games, Sub-Terrania and Red Zone.

Crionics was disbanded shortly after Hardwired was completed, with several of their members joining The Silents. However, it was not long before The Silents suffered the same fate. Most of their Swedish members decided to form DICE and work on games like Pinball Dreams and Benefactor for the Amiga. On the other hand, their Danish members – David Guldbrandsen, Karsten Hvidberg, Jens Bo Albretsen, Michael Balle, Jesper Jørgensen, and Jesper Kyd – decided to form Zyrinx and develop games for the Mega Drive, mainly because they were impressed by the amount of sprites that Sega's console was able to handle compared to the Amiga.

Sub-Terrania was met with positive reviews. Graphically, the game was described as "excellent", with "nicely constructed cavern backdrops" and "stunningly smooth parallax". Many noted the game's impressive opening scene and physics, while GamePro particularly praised the fluid animation and sharp sprites. According to Edge, "some of the sprites are very impressive – especially the huge skull on level two – and no matter how much is happening onscreen, there's never any slowdown".

However, some felt that there was "nothing technically ground-breaking" and that the game could have used a bit more variety in its scenery. The game's soundtrack was described as "superb", featuring a "pseudo-industrial" style and "classy tunes" "that add a heap of atmosphere". According to Mean Machines Sega, "the music is Depeche Mode, while being curiously reminiscent of classic C64 music by the likes of Martin Galway". Hardcore Gaming 101 noted that "pretty much every song in the game is in excess of five minutes long, and is great for listening to outside of the game if you're into stuff like Juno Reactor".