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retrogameessays · 6 years

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Living the Life of a Horror Hero in Zombies Ate My Neighbors

25 Years Later, Zombies Ate My Neighbors still provides a unique take on horror

LucasArts, founded as Lucasfilm Games in 1982, didn't make its first Star Wars game until Star Wars for the NES in February of 1991. The primary reason for the delay was that the Star Wars brand had been licensed to other development companies (Atari had the rights to Star Wars in 1982). The more romantic perspective is that George Lucas didn't want his company to just make games based on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties, but to make more ambitious, technologically advanced works. The early efforts of Lucasfilm Games support this point of view. Habitat, in particular, was released in 1986 and was a way-ahead-of-its-time, graphical, massively-multiplayer online game, that allowed for customization of player avatars, bartering for resources, marriage, and even player-versus-player violence. Either way, the fact that Lucasfilm Games was unable to make Star Wars titles opened the door for the slew of critically-acclaimed adventure games the company became known for. In his keynote speech at Pax Australia 2013, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert said that, “Had we been able to make Star Wars games, I’m sure that’s all we would have made. Not being able to make those games creatively freed us in ways I don’t think we understood at the time. Without that freedom, there would be no Maniac Mansion, or Grim Fandango, or Monkey Island, or Loom.”

Zombies Ate My Neighbors for Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis is very much cut from the same creative cloth as those titles, and yet serves as proof that adventure games were not necessarily the mandate at LucasArts. It's difficult to even say exactly what kind of game Zombies is. It's a top-down, free-scrolling shooter wherein the player must rescue at least one and as many as ten “neighbors” per level from (usually) infinitely spawning monsters. If a monster touches a neighbor before the player does, the neighbor dies. As with a player's lives, the number of neighbors saved carries over to the next level. If the player runs out of lives or neighbors, the game is over. Zombies is similar to Gauntlet in that it's an action game with maze-like level layouts, but also contains shades of Defender in that it's a shooter that requires the player to save victims while defending themselves against an endless onslaught of monsters.

I find your lack of panic disturbing

The game that specifically inspired Zombies Ate My Neighbors' creator, Michael Ebert, was an obscure arcade title named Kyros from Alpha Denshi Corp (better known as ADK and for their collaborations with SNK). Kyros is a top-down, vertically scrolling arcade brawler in which the player must fight through endlessly spawning hordes of monsters to reach the top of a haunted mansion. The visual resemblance is striking; both games use the same perspective and contrast a horror-movie theme with a bright color palette. The gameplay differs greatly in that Kyros is a fairly straightforward brawler while Zombies is a shooter with victims to rescue, but both games include power-ups to augment the player's abilities and fast-paced, relentless action.

In addition to being influenced by Kyros, Ebert told Gamasutra in 2007 that Robotron and Smash TV, which were also arcade titles, were two of his favorite games. The influence of these two games may not be as direct, but both were critically-acclaimed shooters and Robotron included saving humans as a play-mechanic. Action games dominated arcades in the late eighties, so it was only natural that as consoles began to take off in the early nineties, game designers like Ebert would try to replicate those experiences for the home market.

The influence of these arcade games is evident not only in Zombies Ate My Neighbors' play mechanics, but in the game's difficulty. Most monsters spawn indefinitely and randomly, making it virtually impossible to get through any one level unscathed. Enemies will occasionally even spawn near a neighbor that the player cannot reach, making them impossible to save. In arcade games, intentionally random design conventions are meant to coax more quarters out of patrons, but without some way to balance out the randomness, they can be frustrating for console gamers who have already invested 200 or more quarters in buying a game at retail price.

Zombies' designers balanced the game's difficulty by using another relic of arcade games, the player's score. For every 40,000 points scored, the player gets another neighbor to replace any that have been lost, and if the player already has the maximum of 10 neighbors, they receive an extra life. The concept of a score had become less relevant in console games of the time because beating the game had become the point of playing rather than earning a high-score. Zombies brilliantly takes a somewhat outdated concept and makes it relevant again by weaving it into the fiber of the game's design, and in doing so created a risk-reward cycle that adds depth. Exploring every corner of a level can yield bonus point pick-ups and more ammo, but at the risk of taking too much damage or wasting too much ammo in defense.

While the arcade influence is somewhat subtle, the influence of classic horror movies is overt. Every bit of the game's visuals and audio pay homage to horror. Level titles are often parodies of classic horror titles (“Evening of the Undead” vs. Night of the Living Dead), enemies include both classic Universal Pictures monsters and more modern frights (ax-throwing dolls reminiscent of Child's Play and a chainsaw-wielding maniac that combines Leatherface with Jason Vorhees' hockey mask), and the music uses surf guitar and howling theremin samples to evoke a spooky-sixties atmosphere. (Incidentally, if there is a connection between Star Wars and Zombies, it's that Peter Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, appeared in a number of the British Hammer Horror Films.)

More childhood nostalgia: mowing the lawn

The combination of Ebert's nostalgia for eighties arcade games and horror films create a uniquely terrifying experience. The aforementioned difficulty in saving all the neighbors is part of the game's horror atmosphere. There should be a sense of anxiety and loss because that is indeed what happens in a horror movie; people die. Victims are even assigned point values based (subjectively) on how likely a movie-going audience would be to sympathize with their death. Cheerleaders, babies, and dogs are at the top of the list, while men and schoolteachers are at the bottom. In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, the player becomes the protagonist of a horror film. Monsters appear from unexpected places, weapons are fashioned from household items, and sometimes a victim just can't be saved.

George Lucas has always had a talent for creating experiences that connect with people and capture their imaginations, often by riffing on the films and shows that captured his own imagination in the past. Whether it was by his influence or coincidence (or perhaps a bit of both) the game studio that he founded has had a similar knack for capturing gamers' imaginations. If there is a connection between Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Lucas' two most famous franchises, its that they were all born of their creators' nostalgia. In the same way that Star Wars was Lucas doing Flash Gordon and Indiana Jones was Lucas and Spielberg modernizing the movie serials of the '30s and 40's, Zombies was Mike Ebert combining his love for arcade brawlers and shooters of the '80s with horror film nostalgia. It is a testament to the importance of history and shared experiences in pop culture. Someone who plays Zombies may not have the same affection that Mike Ebert has for horror films and eighties arcade games (and almost certainly has not played Kyros), but Ebert's experiences, like Lucas' love for Flash Gordon, are passed along through his art.

Sources:

Kalata, Kurt (October 19, 2012) Kyros/Desolator/Kyros no Yakata. Retrieved from https://hg101.kontek.net/kyros/kyros.htm

Kuchera, Ben (July 19, 2013) Adventure Games Took Off Because Ron Gilbert Couldn't Make Star Wars Games. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20130721093143/http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/ron-gilbert-was-saved-because-he-couldnt-make-star-wars-games

Szczepaniak, John and Derboo, Sam (October 19, 2012) Zombies Ate My Neighbors Legacy. Retrieved from https://hg101.kontek.net/zamn/zamn1.htm

Wallis, Alistair (January 11, 2007) Playing Catch Up: Zombies Ate My Neighbors' Mike Ebert. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12360

#retrogaming #horror #lucasarts #zombiesatemyneighbors

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