Reader request: Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Well, they did.

This column is “Reader request,” which should be pretty self-explanatory. If you want to request a game be played and written up, leave a comment with the game (and system) in question, or let me know on Twitter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Do you like run-and-gun games? Are you satisfied with being able to shoot in just four directions instead of eight? Would you consider yourself a fan of B-movie horror tropes and creatures, whether they be zombies or vampires or mummies or plants with evil intent or possessed dolls wielding weaponry? How do you feel about being lost in a hedge maze while a number of guys with hockey masks and chainsaws chase you down? Are you willing to suspend your disbelief enough to roll with the fact that squirt guns and tomatoes could be enough to put a stop to all of these malevolent forces?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then 1993’s Zombies Ate My Neighbors should be a good time for you. So long as you’re also fine with games that are difficult: Zombies Ate My Neighbors, developed by Lucas Arts and published by Konami on the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, is not only a classic case of the “Nintendo Hard” mentality, as almost everything can damage you, much of it by surprise, but there are also 48 levels (and seven secret bonus levels) you must complete in order to actually finish the game. And that’s difficult to do, because Zombies Ate My Neighbors does not save, nor does it truly let you resume your progress. There’s a password system, sure, but it doesn’t bring your inventory with you from a previous play: just the level you start at. This game is rough, in that sense.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors’ box art really leaned into the B-movie creature aesthetics that are all over the game itself.

It’s also just a ton of fun to mindlessly play, though, all this time later, whether your goal is to complete it or just to play for an hour here and there for the sake of having something enjoyable to do with that time.

It’s the little things with this game that still make it work. Discovering that yes, throwing silverware at a werewolf will destroy them instantly, whereas normally they’d soak up quite a bit of damage, and are hard to hit in the first place given their agility. It’s not having a key to open a door, so instead you equip a bazooka and blow the thing down. It’s chasing down vampires with a crucifix, it’s putting out the little fire demons with an extinguisher. It’s leaving a laughing blow-up clown doll in your wake and then watching four guys with chainsaws converge on it as you make your desperate escape.

The weapons, in general, are great fun. You start with just a squirt gun, and will pick up bazookas and crucifixes and silverware and fire extinguishers, too, but there are also tomatoes, popsicles, dishes, an alien gun that shoots out capturing bubbles, a weed whacker for taking out those pesky propagations, six packs of soda with splash damage, dishes, footballs, and flamethrowers. You will also use all of these, whether you want to or not. Some weapons are more effective against specific enemies, as mentioned, and some are just good for keeping your distance or making generally quick work of a foe. There is no shortage of weaponry in the game, but you’ll also be firing off rounds and throwing projectiles constantly, so you will run out of ammo of specific weapons and have to turn to something new. Once you figure out what everything is best used for, though, you’ll at least manage some level of ammo efficiency, and save yourself from taking some damage, too.

And that’s without even getting into your secondary items. The clowns, I mentioned, but you also get potions with varying effects: one turns you into a powerful beast capable of punching through both walls and enemies, one is literally a mystery that you’ll only discover the answer to after you drink it. There are sprint shoes, keys you need to ration, and Pandora’s Box, which works a lot like you opened the Ark of the Covenant and closed your eyes while your enemies didn’t. The variety of all of these weapons and items still holds up, even in an age where you can squeeze a lot more in a game than you used to be able to nearly 30 years ago.

It’s the couch co-op that helps Zombies Ate My Neighbors continue to be a good time, as well. The glorious couch co-op, which puts both characters, Zeke and Julie, in play. Zombies Ate My Neighbors sometimes can move a little fast for one person, but two? Two can make it all work that much more easily. Sure, you need to ration your health packs a bit more when they’re shared between two players, but presumably you’ll also be offing monsters a lot more efficiently, too, and saving more of the titular neighbors, which will lead to additional extra lives. Plus, all of this is just more fun to take in with a pal.

Those neighbors are very much the point. You can make your way through Zombies Ate My Neighbors with most of the neighbors, well, ate. But a lot of the fun of the game is racing to find said neighbors — the cheerleaders, the babies, the photo-taking tourists, the overwhelmed soldiers sent in to stop the monsters who also act as an explanation for the bazookas you find lying around, the guy at the grill and the food he is grilling that are worth more points than he is — before the creatures can get to them. You’ll know when one is found by a monster before you could save them, because a Wilhelm Scream will burst forth from your speakers. Once all neighbors are accounted for, whether saved or killed, an exit door will open up and allow you to complete the stage. You get bonus points for each neighbor saved, and additional points if you saved all of them. Bonus levels also appear under certain conditions, like saving all of the neighbors for a certain segment of levels, which will in turn mean more opportunities for you to score points, pick up items, and earn extra lives.

So, yeah, you should be trying to save these neighbors, even though it will put you in danger pretty regularly, or force you to use up bazooka rounds to blow through hedges or walls in order to rescue these people before a zombie can start chewing on their brains. You might need those rounds later on, for items or for surviving a surprise attack by a foe you can’t just squirt gun to death, but still. “Zombies Ate My Neighbors” doesn’t have to be the game, you know. “Zombies Tried To Eat My Neighbors, But I Stopped Them” is just harder to fit onto a box.

There are differences between the SNES and Genesis versions of the game. Retro Sanctuary did a breakdown of the two, and the clear winner is the SNES version. It has richer, more detailed graphics, the sound and music are superior on the original SNES version of the game, while the Genesis suffered from what occasionally would happen with ports to it: sounds and songs that weren’t designed from the ground up with the Genesis’ audio hardware in mind end up sounding off. And considering how good the soundtrack is, as little of it as there is, you’ll want the superior audio experience.

As a kid, I mostly played the Genesis version, because that’s what was available to me (meaning, that’s what my babysitter’s kids had), but since then, I’ve played the SNES version almost exclusively, and I have to agree with the Retro Sanctuary conclusion. It looks and sounds better, and even if it’s full of purple ooze instead of blood because this is early-90s Nintendo we’re talking about, it all fits the B-movie aesthetic, anyway.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors has a sequel, Ghoul Patrol, but it’s not nearly as fun nor as interesting. It is, however, packed in with Zombies Ate My Neighbors for a re-release on the Switch, Playstation 4, and Xbox One systems. I actually haven’t played that version of the game yet, so I’ll turn to Nintendo Life for the disappointing reveal on that one:

Bafflingly, though, this is a reshuffle of the original SNES version’s controls and there’s no way to remap them in-game. Eh?

That isn’t the only oddity about this port – from what we could tell, you essentially launch straight into the game from its new menu, meaning you won’t be seeing the original title screen and character select, nor is there seemingly a way to enter passwords without starting the game and taking a Game Over. There’s also a perpetual border on the screen, and it's — how to put this gracefully? — ugly, pointless and stupid.

…

Of course, Ghoul Patrol — the follow-up to Neighbors — is included in the package too, but to be totally honest it's more of a curio than anything else. Compared to the original it pretty much flat-out sucks, but the original is a fantastic game so anything will seem less impressive by comparison. The graphics are good, but the new jump and slide moves don't add depth or complexity to the levels (of which there are now fewer), just annoyance when they begin to introduce finicky, unenjoyable platforming. It's a weak follow-up that was never originally intended to be one, but its inclusion here is welcome even if we're not going to put much time into it. The visuals are decent enough and the music is fun and cartoony, the boss variety is better than ZAMN but... there's really nothing else we can say in its favour.

Weird technical decisions for Zombies Ate My Neighbors, sure, but it’s still Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and no one is going to force you to play Ghoul Patrol even if it’s part of the digital package. You could do a lot worse for $14.99, basically, and the combo game also seems to be on sale pretty regularly, too, so you don’t even need to pay $15 to legally revisit your childhood if you don’t want to. Plus, the re-release version now allows you to save your game! Forget the introduction of achievements, being able to save a difficult game that has over 50 levels is where it’s at.

A true classic of the genre, as Lucas Arts games tend to be. If you’ve never played, it’s worth giving it a shot, and if it’s simply been awhile, it’s worth revisiting. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Thanks to @DanJGlickman on Twitter for the game request

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