Undeadline (1989)

UndeadLine is a Vertically Walking Shooter that feels built for arcade machines that never existed. It features a whole lot of bad features for shooting games such as "start at arbitraily designed checkpoint in level system" and "upgrade system that is confusing and chaotic and you won't figure it out"

a potoin. All upgrade can be shot at to cycle through their effects. Potions add random chaotic modifiers to you such as invicibiality, extra shots, or changing the way youir weapon functions in different ways. just keeep shooting the poition before picking it up to see all of this games weird effects. Each stage (six total plus the boss special level) has a different theme. This was actually well doen I though.
*Some zones have themes based off Splatterhouse and some have themes based off Castlevania

It is very hard and truly does feel "built for Arcade"(tm) but every now and then there was a bit of inspiration peeking through the difffulclty Some weapons, like the boomerang, can apparently be very bad for boss fights as they fail to hit them unless in pixel peffect position

UndealineLine has lots of really bad shitty "features" for a shooting game. It's a mix of chaos with what feels like poor testing. Sticking with boomerangs i've somehow modifiers them to home in on targets. But I couldn't explain how if my life depend on it In between levels you can also add upgrade points to your attributes to do I have absolutely no idea

It was a fun game that i actually did like but really didnt understand any aspect of the game play. As soon as it restarted me to the beginning of the level I turned on infinite energy and had a good time. It was clear it had some shady and insidious design and I decided to play by my own rules, as usual in this kinda territory.😎