The Other Zombie Games

Braaaains! With Halloween upon us, it’s time to take a look at one of our all-time favorite monsters, the zombie. The undead make for great cannon fodder in video games. Not all zombie-related video games need to be survival horror, designed to get us wetting ourselves with fright. Some are just good ol’ fashioned fun! Simple games where you can blow off some steam mowing down crowds of walking corpses guilt-free! It’s not like they’re people…Well, at least they used to be.

House Of The Dead

The zombies learned to use chainsaws? We're all screwed!

This rail-style shooter was a huge hit in the arcades and became a major attraction for Sega’s Saturn and Dreamcast consoles. Light gun in hand, you’re taken through various environments facing a shooting gallery of hatchet-wielding zombies and bloodthirsty monstrosities. There was probably a plot involved somewhere, but it never mattered. All we wanted the game to give us was something to shoot at—preferably something with detachable limbs.

It’s a shame that this franchise faded away. One might assume it was due to the decline of arcades, but I believe that typing and Uwe Boll are more to blame.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors

I'm actually more interested in what the neighbor's eating...

Going a little old school, this game for the SNES and Sega Genesis sets you on the verge of the zombie apocalypse, bestowing upon you the responsibility of saving your neighbors from certain doom. While it was published by Konami, it was actually developed by LucasArts in a time when SCUMM ruled the PC gaming world. This meant that this game was at least two things: difficult and insanely wacky.

Settings included your ‘hood as well as shopping malls and hedge mazes. Along with zombies, you faced off against more classic monsters like vampires and werewolves. And of course, the not-so-traditional monsters like a gigantic demon baby!

Zombie Revenge

Saving my favorite for last! Like House Of The Dead, Zombie Revenge started as an arcade quarter-snatcher before becoming a cult classic for the Dreamcast. The gameplay is perfect; multiplayer beat-em-up with an assortment of gruesome weaponry to unleash on the armies of darkness. You get your choice of “the guy,” “the girl,” and a dude who looks like Jackie Chan if he were in a ’70s cop show. You’d best watch your buddy’s back, since if a player dies and runs out of credits, they’ll turn into a zombie themselves. And like in most zombie movies, “Promise me! If that happens to me, you know what to do, man!”

Again, there’s a plot, but who cares. It’s the typical “virus gone wild by some mad scientist” routine. This game is about tearing down zombies for as long as possible with your friends. I’ll tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than jamming a drill into a zombie’s gut and letting that sucker spin to pieces. Oh, and did I mention the worst dubbing ever?