#638: Zombie Raid
Obscure American Sammy gorefest walked so House of the Dead could run
Initial release: September 1995
Platform: Arcade
Developer: American Sammy
Light gun games are a weird breed. Perhaps the purest form of arcade game, with the concept going back to target shooting games at fairs and boardwalks, they’ve nonetheless long been supplanted by first person shooters that you can play in the comfort of your own home. But I don’t know, there’s something cathartic in having an actual light gun in your hand that you can shoot things with… Anyway, the mid-90s was a high point for arcade games, and while the transition to 3D graphics was in its infancy — The House of the Dead was just around the corner — the push for gorier, more violent graphics was making headway in the wake of Mortal Kombat. Enter American Sammy’s Zombie Raid.
Sammy is an interesting company. Originally forming in 1975 as an arcade machine manufacturer, they established an American subsidiary in 1988 to start publishing games in the West. Well before their takeover of Sega in the 2000s, they were a consistent feature in the arcades and on consoles, if not a particularly notable one; their biggest claim to fame prior to buying Sega is probably publishing some of the early Guilty Gear games. Somewhere lost in the middle was Zombie Raid, developed in-house by American Sammy (who usually just published,) released in 1995 (exact date unclear,) and proposing a simple concept: it’s 1918, somewhere in England (the war seems to be just a distant concern, as it’s not mentioned) and a small village has been terrorized by kidnappings and grave robberies and even claims of monster sightings. A detective by the name of Edward Windsor (no relation to Prince Edward of York as far as anyone knows) arrives to deal with the problem. Cue about 45 minutes of some of the goriest sprites ever committed to a mid-90s arcade board.
It’s actually shocking how messy Zombie Raid is. Just about every enemy explodes into a wad of chunky spaghetti upon death. Tormented corpses dot the backgrounds, including what I suspect are several composited out of stock photos. Enemy sprites are large and of high-quality, so you get to see every detail of ribs and guts bursting out of them as they’re blown apart. Compared to this, the low-poly gore of House of the Dead the following year feels positively quaint. In a way it’s an interesting landmark, nearly a decade removed from another light gun game called Chiller, which at the time kicked off a firestorm of controversy over video game violence but in the long run is now barely a footnote; Zombie Raid in comparison went almost completely unnoticed.
Perhaps that’s because of its intense difficulty. The screen is frequently filled with enemies who all hit fast — often you’ll be in a situation where you just simply can’t hit every enemy on screen and you’ll have to eat damage no matter what. So get ready to see the “continue?” message a lot. Zombie Raid is, in essence, intentionally designed to eat a lot of quarters. And the worst part is, even if you get all the way to the end of the final level, you may still not see the end, because of a weird side quest you need to do that the game doesn’t tell you about or explain: find three crystals throughout the earlier levels and place them in the right order. Fail to do this and you’re screwed, you get the bad ending. Infuriating.
Nevertheless, Zombie Raid promises a lot of fun. The levels are pretty long and varied, taking you through a cemetery, a daring car chase, a spooky castle and a mad scientist lab, with lots of things to shoot. Your targets are not just enemies, which range from zombies to werewolves to giant bat monsters to undead gunmen; you’re also able to do quite a bit of property damage, which sometimes nets you a reward in the form of more points, or a temporary upgrade to your ammunition. There are also innocent civilians you need to avoid shooting, which costs you a portion of your lifebar. The bosses take quite the beating, an absurd amount, actually, which is just a good example of how out of whack the difficulty is; but they can be pretty fun, especially the vampire you fight after a twist reveal.
Graphically it’s pretty neat. The backgrounds make use of murky palettes and photosourced assets to give the proceedings a nice, gloomy, gothic horror flavor, the sprites are big and detailed and colorful, with bullet casings flipping out of the HUD when you reload. There’s often quite a lot happening on-screen, which as I said earlier poses its own issues but is nevertheless impressive. While the music will definitely be overshadowed by the unending blam blam, it’s a solid score by longtime pinball composer Brian Schmidt, who has given us some nice, spooky music to shoot the undead with. The sound effects aren’t bad either, though there is some voice acting that is so awful it’s hysterical and only cements the pulpy vibe of the game.
I don’t think I’d replay Zombie Raid again just because it’s ultimately a frustrating play, but I admire its commitment to an aesthetic that just a couple years prior would have gotten it put on trial in Congress. It’s silly, goofy, messy fun that, even if it doesn’t completely live up to its promise, is still fairly entertaining provided you have infinite credits.