Zombie Nation (NES) Playthrough

Описание: A playthrough of Meldac's 1991 shoot 'em up for the NES, Zombie Nation.

Played through on the hard setting.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a malevolent alien being known as Darc Seed crash lands in the Nevada desert. Intent on conquering the United States, he immediately sets about turning the people into zombies, imbuing the Statue of Liberty with life, and stealing the nation's strongest weapon, a legendary samurai sword. As the only force on Earth capable of standing up to such a threat, a samurai's severed head, Namakubi (生首, lit. "living head"), takes off to save America.

Zombie Nation is a horizontally scrolling shooter with a heavy focus on destructable terrain. As Namakubi, you blitz your way through four stages, firing a never-ending stream of exploding eyeballs and vomit at whatever stands in your way, and you can boost your firepower by capturing the innocent people who go flying whenever you destroy parts of the environment.

The premise alone makes for one of the strangest NES games you could ever hope to play, and the designers at KAZe did their utmost to ensure that the experience lived up to the concept. Every stage is a hellscape with screaming people raining down from the skies. The boss designs are completely unhinged. The graphics impress with their detail and animation, even as the screen becomes an indecipherable jumble of flickering sprites and neon streaks. The music drives a good beat in the rare moments when it isn't being buried beneath a cacophony of explosions and screams, and the heavy use of samples gives the audio a comically brash, lo-fi quality. The bit-crushed orchestra hit sample used for the bass lines was a particularly inspired choice.

The gameplay is nothing to write home about, but it's servicable. Namakubi is virtually untouchable as long as he steers clear of the laser beams, lightning bolts, and falling boulders, and when he's fully powered up, his eyeball/puke cannons melt through waves of enemies with ease. All of this comes with a major trade-off, though: the controls are ungainly and quite difficult to come to grips with. Namakubi exaggeratedly picks up momentum as he moves. The faster he goes, the longer it takes him to stop or to change direction - like he's skidding on ice - and whenever he hits a solid object at full speed, he caroms off it like a fleshy pinball. Namakubi is a huge target, and the imprecise controls can be a real source of frustration when you're trying to weave through tight spots. The game becomes pretty easy once you get used to the handling, but getting to that point is a challenge.

I do like how Namakubi shouts 無念 ("munen," which roughly translates to something like, "oh no!") in a comic-style bubble when he goes down, though.

In my mind, a rough game that takes huge creative swings is worth far more than a polished, innocuous one that merely rehashes genre conventions. Zombie Nation is a wild game that is as ugly, shrill, and clumsy as it is creative, ambitious, and impressive, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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