Format: Cartridge
Genre: Action
Developer: LucasArts
Publisher: Konami

Zombies Ate My Neighbors is played from an overhead, 3/4 perspective, and features completely hand drawn character and scenery art. Probably the most important aesthetic consideration in a game as frantic as this is for every actor and object to be immediately distinguishable from its surroundings. At that, the game succeeds perfectly, and throws in lots of charm for good measure.

Joe McDermott's soundtrack is meant to parody cheesy, 60's B-rated horror flick fare-- think of "Night of the Living Dead's" score and you get the idea. And it works as well as you might imagine too, as it oscillates from frantic to downright moribund depending on the stage. Sound effects are another strong point, with crisp sounding voice samples and demonstrative programmable effects as well.

This title has a control scheme that can be picked up and used to full effect in a matter of seconds. The problems start to come in once you've acquired your thousandth weapon-- the weapons are highly inventive, ranging from dinner plates to American footballs, but you spend half of your time playing simply cycling through them all, as some enemies can essentially only be killed with the correct one. The whole "surviving victim count dwindles as I play" is a neat wait to incentivize the player to thoroughly explore the stages, and briskly at that.

It would be shocking if modern zombie-themed games such as Valve's "Left 4 Dead" and Capcom's "Dead Rising" weren't heavily inspired by this game, because many of Zombies Ate My Neighbors' mechanics found there way into those aforementioned contemporary stalwarts. The game has no shortage of great ideas, but too many of the stages are just too hectic to be fun-- the game probably would have been more enjoyable as a slower-paced, Toejam & Earl-style exploration-focused romp.