Undeadline

Undeadline is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game with role-playing elements that plays from a top-down perspective. The plot revolves around Zidane, a country surrounded by barriers connected with the demon world whose monsters have overflowed it after being broken in a previous regime. Queen Althea manages the kingdom, as his father became exhausted from battle and fell ill, but she is kidnapped by a creature from the demon world. Joined by the wizard Dino and the ninja Ruika, the fighter Leon stands up to rescue his sister. Prior to starting, the player can configure the game's difficulty or activate rapid fire.

Controlling either the fighter, wizard, or ninja, the player can choose from the first six stages and play them in any order, fighting against an assortment of enemy waves, while defending or avoiding collision with their projectiles and other obstacles. There are seven stages in total, which include forests, ruins, and dungeons. The scenery is constantly scrolling and never stops moving until a miniboss or boss is reached, which must be fought to progress further. Each character also possess their own defense methods, such as Leon being able to block projectiles with his shield.

Undeadline was developed by T&E Soft, best known for the Hydlide series. It was directed and designed by Tokihiro Naito, who previously worked on Hydlide and Hydlide 3, under supervision of Eiji Yokoyama and Toshiro Yokoyama. Tetsuya "Futaro" Yamamoto served as main programmer, with Katsushi Morizane and Shigeru Tomita providing subroutines. Etsuko Suzuki, Hideaki Shinmura, Kayoko Miura, Kenji Nakashima, Takahiro Hachiya, Takako Hayase, and Yuuji Hattori were responsible for designing the artwork.

The music was scored by Kazunori Hasegawa. According to Tetsuya Yamamoto, T&E Soft liked pushing its playtesters to their limits by cutting a hole in paper and using it to cover the screen so only a portion of the playfield was visible at any time. Yamamoto recounted that this led the designers increasing the difficulty to keep up with the testers, as their skills improved naturally, with T&E Soft particularly paying attention to both enemy movement and spawn patterns.

Undeadline received generally favorable reception from critics, most of which reviewed it as an import title. The Sega Mega Drive version received scores of 18.08 out of 30 and 6.6428 out of 10 in public polls taken by Mega Drive Fan and the Japanese Sega Saturn Magazine respectively. Technopolis highlighted its mixture of role-playing and shooting elements, and the ability to select any stage but noted its difficulty. The Japanese MSX Magazine echoed similar sentiments but also noted the ability to choose between characters, commending its playability, visuals, and scenario. MSX Club's Pere Baño praised the colorful graphics, addictive fast-pacing, sound, presentation, and originality.

An editor for MSX Gids lauded its audiovisual presentation and quality, comparing it favourably with Knightmare (1986). X's Hiroaki Kageyama commended the X68000 port for taking advantage of the system's hardware and the addition of extra stages. Kageyama also gave positive remarks to the game's idea and intensity. Games-X reviewed the Mega Drive version, commending its presentation for the detailed backgrounds, enemy animations, and atmosphere, but they saw its difficulty even on the easiest setting as a negative.