Pasokon Retro is our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, encompassing everything from specialist ’80s computers to the happy days of Windows XP.
It’s spooky season, and what better way to celebrate the month of pumpkin carving, wobbly lawn skeletons, and overpriced themed lattes than with a great horror game. Some years this means I decide to play something restrained and sophisticated, some esoteric game that tries to make me feel so unnerved by its glimpses of ghosts I “accidentally” leave a light on when I go to bed. I’ve also gone venturing into a dark and foreboding puzzle box of haunted house, experiencing the sort of adventure that makes my brain ache, my hair stand on end, and my team of would-be survivors drop like flies.
But sometimes my spine tingles for something simpler. Something a little silly and cartoonishly gruesome, more B-movie than b-rilliant. And in those moments I get my keyboard ready for an hour’s blast through Undeadline’s hordes of bats, rats, slimes, and giant octopi with visible brains tucked safely inside their glistening heads. The awesome power of swords, spells, and shurikens available for me to throw around turn the game’s unending supply of enemies into piles of gore and guts. Take that, fear!
At a glance this bloody action seems like an odd turn for T & E Soft, the developer most famous for giving gaming the much more subdued RPG action of Hydlide, but in some ways it’s not so far afield. Undeadline may be an auto scrolling shmup-like game, but it’s one with three fantasy characters to choose from, two optional multiclasses for each of them, and four different stats to boost with experience points at the end of each stage. The end result of this unlikely monster mash is something that plays a bit like the unholy offspring of Gauntlet and Galaga, or the edgy goth sibling of the cute and colourful Pocky & Rocky.
There’s plenty of shooting (and being shot at) in here, but I’m also dodging spike traps in the floor and smashing down cavern walls while still trying to pick up treasure chests, hoping I paid enough attention to whatever popped out to pick a weapon that scales off my strongest stat, or remembering that red potions harm rather than heal before I reflexively lunge for one.
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The original MSX2 version of this sinister shooter debuted in 1989 and was an impressive feat for the hardware, but not quite the fully unleashed horror house of fun it could be. The Mega Drive reimagining from 1991 hoped being bright and busy would be enough to disguise its meagre animation. But it’s the X68000 version of the game, released neatly between the two, that’s my favourite. The sprites here are lavishly detailed and well animated, to the point where each of the three playable characters have not only a default costume to call their own but unique multiclass outfits too, perfectly capturing ’90s anime tropes with giant pointy golden pauldrons to excessively flappy capes.
All of Undeadline’s six standard stages have been redrawn and redesigned to flex the technical might of Sharp’s powerful home computer, and then two new and exclusive ones have been added on top, as a tricky sort of treat.
There’s a lot of very carefully crafted design in here, a lot of tiny ideas working together in perfect harmony, and I love Undeadline for having some serious meat on its reanimated bones for a 35-year-old shmup. I like needing to really understand how the weapons and spells work to get the most out of them, knowing when I can make the most of a piercing icy blast or would perhaps be better off using the controlled throws of the kusarigama. I like being able to work my way through the stages in any order, knowing that however I play there’s always going to be a dramatic final stage waiting for me once they’re all cleared. And I love finding a semi-secret treasure chest with a shiny gem inside, sending my score higher than before.
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But it’s the game’s generous helping of cheese that keeps me coming back for one more bite. Lots of shmups are clever and well made, but few take me on a monster mash-up of an adventure covering tumbledown graveyards, waterlogged dungeons, and somewhere ominously referred to simply as “Mold”. It’s also rare for a shmup to let me fling fireballs at maggoty things that split apart in a satisfyingly grisly way or admire fancy demonic torches and stomping across thick rolls of tastefully frayed blood-red carpet as I do so. And I can’t think of any others at all that decide the perfect end of level climax is a fight with an aggressive giant lobster wallowing in a lava bath. More games should feature giant lobsters, in my opinion.
The end result is a game as opulent, bloody, and outrageous as a disco at Dracula’s house, one that can’t go five minutes without showing off some weird beast or fancy parallax scrolling effect, sometimes making flesh-pink walls appear to loom over my character, sometimes just letting me sit back, relax, and enjoy hurling boomerangs at a three-headed dragon or fight off spirits with that classic piece of ghostbusting kit: a magic-spitting fairy.
Undeadline may only last about as long as a trick or treat bag stuffed with sweets, but every moment with it is delicious.