Using the ship's "rotate-and-thrust" capabilities, the players must aim, shoot, dodge and carefully maneuver their way through the hazardous landscape while constantly taking gravity and refueling needs into account.

The bulk of the missions involve rescuing trapped miners, carrying and utilizing various types of special equipment, collecting sub modules (to allow your attack ship to go underwater), and defeating alien bosses.

Attaching the ship on the rails turns off fuel consumption and nullifies the effects of gravity which can make for easier targeting against bosses and barriers.

[4] Each difficulty mode affects the rate of fuel-consumption, the strength of the gravitational pull, the intensity of inertia, the amount of enemy damage that players can sustain and the number of bonus points at the end of each stage.

[14] 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.

[14] According to Sega of America producer Tony Van, the game's code was very stable but, since Zyrinx had to "hack" a lot of their data, it had a number of "incorrect read/writes" that had to be addressed.

His sound driver was also used in Red Zone, The Adventures of Batman & Robin (Mega Drive/Genesis version), AWS Pro Moves Soccer and Ultracore.

In a 2005 interview with Sega-16, Sega of America producer Tony Van commented on the matter, saying: "I personally could finish the game, and I'm not anywhere near as good as most gamers, so I think it got a bad rap – a few people were put off by it, and the rest just agreed without trying it.

Participants were tasked with playing the game on the hardest difficulty setting and taking a picture of the victory screen after defeating the final boss.

The prizes included: all-paid weekends in New York and Los Angeles to attend the Marvel Mega-Tour, VIP tours of the Marvel headquarters, Sega Genesis CDX systems, three games (Gunstar Heroes, Ranger X, and Thunder Force IV), limited editions comic book ashcans and Sub-Terrania hats and T-shirts.

[1] Edge awarded the game a 9 out of 10, concluding that "Sub-Terrania is quite simply a superbly structured and implemented piece of software: fast, clever, varied and, above all, addictive.

Borrowing heavily from blasters from the past – Oids, Thrust and Lunar Rescue – it feels like a classic game yet breathes new life into the shoot 'em up genre".

[1] Similar sentiments were echoed in the review of German magazine ASM, which described Sub-Terrania as an evolution of the 1986 game Thrust, with updated presentation and "much more varied gameplay".

[25] In their review, GamePro deemed it "one of the best games of the year" and gave it a near-perfect score, citing the unique concept and outstanding graphics and animation.

[5] French magazine Consoles+ felt that Sub-Terrania stands out compared to other shoot 'em up games, not only because of its graphics, music and presentation, but also for combining classic traits of the genre, like fast reactions, with methodical, more calculating, action.

[23] Computer and Video Games described Sub-Terrania as "a gorgeous and involving blast" in which shooting "mingles perfectly" with the gravity-based action.

[9] On a similar note, Sega Zone pointed out that "the manual dexterity of staying alive and the spacial awareness of telling left from right when you're upside down give way to tactics and strategy", describing it as "a tough and well designed learning curve".

According to Richard Lloyd of MegaTech, Sub-Terrania "is very tough on the hardest settings, but after playing it for only a few hours I managed to get all the way to level eight with a whole load of lives left.

[4] Mean Machines gave it a score of 91% concluding that Sub-Terrania is "an addition to the list of Mega Drive classics, albeit a minor one for reasons of size".

[30] Sub-Terrania appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, by longtime editor of Edge magazine Tony Mott.