''Zombie Nation'' is a

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

Shoot 'em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of charac ...

game developed by

KAZe Kaze may refer to: * KAZE, an American radio station located in Texas * KAZe, a Japanese video game developer * Kazé, a French publishing company * Kaze-Forces for the Defense of Democracy, a political party in Burundi Fiction * ''Kaze'' (tel ...

and published by

Meldac is a Japanese music and video game company. They also had a subsidiary in America called Meldac of America before it became defunct in the 1990s. Meldac has produced albums for Jennifer Love Hewitt (''Love Songs''), Christopher Sluka, and J- ...

. It was first released in Japan on December 14, 1990 under the title , before being released later in the United States in January 1991. This game features a juxtaposition of

zombie A zombie ( Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in w ...

s, aliens and

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

. In ''Zombie Nation'', the floating

head Namakubi goes to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

to destroy Darc Seed—an alien who crashed to

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

via a meteorite in 1999, turned all the American people into

s, and took control of various deadly weapons. Namakubi must recover the samurai sword Shura and destroy Darc Seed and its minions.

Gameplay

Depending on the version of the game, the player controls the giant levitating disembodied

head or a giant

Tengu are a type of legendary creature found in Japanese folk religion (Shinto). They are considered a type of '' yōkai'' (supernatural beings) or Shinto ''kami'' (gods). The ''Tengu'' were originally thought to take the forms of birds of prey and ...

mask. The player can destroy structures and enemies by shooting rapid-fire eyeballs and vomit at them. Enemies include zombie snipers,

zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp ...

s and lava monsters. The player can upgrade their firepower by rescuing zombie

hostage A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized, such as a relative, employer, law enforcement or government to act, or refr ...

s that leap out of structures when destroyed. The player starts every level with a full life bar of eight units (displayed as mini Namakubi heads on the bottom of the screen), and as the player gets hit, the life bar decreases. When it is down to one bar remaining, the music changes to a dramatic theme. The game ends when the player loses all eight units of the life bar or is crushed by the scrolling of the screen. However, the player can regenerate some of their life by defeating enemies and structures. In addition, the player gets six (increasing by one for every stage section completed, up to a maximum of nine) continues to beat the game. ''Zombie Nation'' features two difficulty levels, easy and hard. The game also allows the player, like in the '' Mega Man'' series, to select any stage at will. Once a stage is selected the following stages will be played sequentially cycling from stage 4 back to 1. The objective is to clear all four stages and then destroy the final

boss Boss may refer to: Occupations * Supervisor, often referred to as boss * Air boss, more formally, air officer, the person in charge of aircraft operations on an aircraft carrier * Crime boss, the head of a criminal organization * Fire boss, ...

, Darc Seed.

Story

The plot of both ''Zombie Nation'' and ''Abarenbou Tengu'' takes place in 1999, when a

meteor A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...

known as "Darc Seed" (Eva in the Japanese version) crashes in the

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

desert. Darc Seed/Eva then shoots magnetic rays and turns the people of the

into

s. Darc Seed/Eva also brings the Statue of Liberty to life to follow its commands. The magnetic rays also allow Darc Seed/Eva to control many deadly weapons, including the most powerful weapon of all—the legendary

sword Shura. The head of the samurai Namakubi hears of Shura falling into Darc Seed's clutches. He then heads to the United States to destroy Darc Seed, free the American people from the looming zombification and reclaim the samurai sword Shura.

Development and release

The game was first released in Japan under the name ''Abarenbou Tengu'' on December 14, 1990. The US version was released a month later. As both versions only have differences between the sprites, with the Japanese version having a tengu mask belonging to

Japanese folklore Japanese folklore encompasses the informally learned folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people as expressed in its oral traditions, customs, and material culture. In Japanese, the term is used to describe folklore. The academic study o ...

, the US version has major graphical and story changes, replacing the tengu mask with the decapitated samurai head. Aside from the differences, both games are practically identical, with the Japanese version having only a few major differences: * In ''Abarenbou Tengu'', the player must obtain the rapid fire ability. In Zombie Nation, the player starts with it. * The main character's sprite is not that of the flying samurai head, Namakubi, but that of a Japanese konoha tengu head. The title screen is different with the tengu's head being incorporated into it. * The boss of Round I is an evil Statue of Liberty in both games but with a slightly different sprite; instead of being green with snakes in place of its crown in ''Zombie Nation'', it's red and has a normal crown.

Reception

The ''

St. Petersburg Times The ''Tampa Bay Times'', previously named the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It has won fourteen Pulitzer Prizes since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single ...

'' tied the game with '' Splatterhouse 2'' as the tenth best video game of 1992. Mashable, in ranking ''Zombie Nation'' the second weirdest video game of all time, claimed it "brings the side-scrolling shooter genre to a weird and gross new height. As challenging as it is confusing, the high point of this game is the chance to take down an animated, evil Statue of Liberty." On the other hand, the Japanese version is criticized due to its difficulty and gameplay, and considered a . However, both versions of the game are considered a cult hit among gamers.

Other media

''Abarenbou Tengu'' is one of the video games adapted into a manga titled , published in the Gamest Comics collection from April 1999, drawn by Kouta Hirano. In August 2020,

City Connection is a 1985 platform game developed by NMK_(company), NMK and published in arcade video game, arcades by Jaleco. It was released in North America by Kitkorp as ''Cruisin. The player controls Clarice in her Honda City (AA), Honda City hatchback an ...

announced a re-release of the game under the name . The game was released on both the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows platforms on October 28, 2021.

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zombie Nation (Video Game) 1990 video games KAZe games Meldac games Nintendo Entertainment System games Scrolling shooters Video games set in 1999 Alternate history video games Video games about samurai Video games developed in Japan Video games set in the United States Video games about zombies Single-player video games Works about tengu