Zombies Ate My Neighbors

"Zombie Bites Dog, Film at 11"

Zombies are invading our towns! Gill men attacking the beaches! Giant babies are terrorizing shopping malls! Who you gonna call?! If you said two teenagers with squirt guns, you're right! Huh??!

Yep, not the cops, not the national guard, not even the Ghostbusters. Apparently a mad scientist named Dr. Tongue has brought a bunch of movie monsters to life, and only Zeke and Julie can save the people of Nonamesville from them. And they're gonna need all the fire extinguishers, popsicles and silverware they can get! Personally I'd hold out for something better if I was going up against werewolves, huge caterpillars, huger babies, chainsaw maniacs and the unending swarm of the living dead. But not Zeke and Julie! Hope they're ready to put up with frantic weapon shifting in the heat of battle.

The graphics are nicely done and cartoony. Even though the title is ''Zombies Ate my Neighbors'' and they're going around killing your town a person at a time, it's never really that scary. It's easy to tell the game is comedic rather than horrific. The sounds are pretty good too, with a very noticeable scream cutting the air everytime a zombie finds a bystander before you do. The creepy laugh the killer dolls make as they appear is good too,

The idea of each level is to find as many innocent people as you can before the monsters do. No problems yet. The more you save, the more points you get. Once all have been found and either saved or devoured, the door to the next level appears. And if the monsters find all the people first, it's an instant game over no matter how far in you are. But the frenzy of the search is kind of wrecked by the fact that as long as you rescue one person, just one, it doesn't matter if the monsters beat you to all the others. Oops, the little mushroom man just got the soldier and those tourists. Oh well, I already saved a teacher, no big deal. A bit bigger of a quota would've made for a slightly more challenging game, but then again the higher levels are quite hard without any help.

You start armed with just a squirt gun. This works decently on zombies and pod people but is just about useless against any other monster, so you need to find other weapons lying around. Each monster has a weakness to a particular weapon, like the blobs hate popsicles or fire extinguishers and for some reason aliens hate tomatoes.

And then there's actually using them. You press one button to fire your weapon, another to cycle through the others. The same for your secondary items like first aid kits and monster potions. And the monsters don't wait while you're doing so, so you can become a meal yourself while trying to find the proper weapon. Also the hit detection seemed a bit finicky at times to me, but those are my only big problems with the game, and I'll admit I used to think they were a lot a bigger.

All that said, Zombies Ate My Neighbors ain't too bad. A more streamlined inventory system would've been nice, but it doesn't destroy the appeal of the game. If you can stand that, and plenty of people can, there is a lot of fun to be had running around saving cheerleaders, dogs and tourists from zombies and mummies. A comedic approach to horror is a bit fresh in an era that's seen several Clock Tower, Resident Evil and Silent Hill sequels decide to go for straight horror and gore. If you'd like a break from that, by all means check this out.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/04, Updated 12/03/07

Game Release: Zombies Ate My Neighbors (US, September 1993)