In Zombie Nation (Or Abarenbou Tengu), you play as a giant floating head who destroys buildings and the US military. The only obstacles in your way are giant buff men, Medusa and aliens. You shoot out giant eyeballs, and vomit out of your mouth to attack. For many this is where the description of Zombie Nation stops. It's position as a weird "Too japanese" game on the NES stands above any actual discussion to have about the game.
In all fairness to many who don't see it as anymore than just an amusing footnote in the NES library, I get it man! I did not start this game for a while because a quick shmup with a weirdo presence doesn't take any importance over other games I'm interested in playing. It was 12am, I was getting ready for bed, but I wanted to play a game so I booted up Zombie Nation and MAN! I kind of loved it?
Beyond it's concept that will immediately stick in my head until the day I die, Zombie Nation has such a perfect hangoutitude to it. It's music is great and worth bopping along to. It's fast paced boss battle music belongs alongside the absolute best of obscure NES OST's. It's pixel art is great, as expected by any late-era NES title, but it stands out in particular with it's huge pillars of fire, beautiful boss sprites (to be fair, a lot of NES games have beautiful boss sprites in dark rooms but still absolutely suck, looking at Totally Rad here) and it's tinier details like it's start screen and it's health bar look brilliant (Those are some sick looking skeletons man).
It's gameplay might be hard to praise as highly as it's other elements, but it works. The presentation elevates the gameplay far higher than it has any actual right to. The debris flying off of buildings as you destroy them makes every shot feel more powerful. Explosions are huge, and it's giant health bar allows the player to keep track of their health despite the ensuing chaos on screen. Fighting against a waterfalls current as snakes try to attack you, or flying over giant goop monsters who you can't kill, the game has some real interesting ideas here. I'm by no means any sort of STG enthusiast, I've only really played a few NES titles (Abadox, 1943, half of Xexyz) but it is a genre I hope to dabble in more eventually (R-Type Final, ZeroRanger and DoDonpachi in particular stand outs as personal must-plays) and I can tell it doesn't live up to any sort of genre standards you would hope to see.
Zombie Nation excels at exactly what it sets out to do. It's a shooting game you can just hang out with, open up with the hopes of getting a little further (man it is real hard at times, but I wasn't deterred), and get out with the game having left some sort of impression on you. It's stylish, and it works real well. It's a game we might talk about as kusoge, or a game we laugh at derisively, but I loved my time with this. It's worth spending time with outside of it's unique premise.
In all fairness to many who don't see it as anymore than just an amusing footnote in the NES library, I get it man! I did not start this game for a while because a quick shmup with a weirdo presence doesn't take any importance over other games I'm interested in playing. It was 12am, I was getting ready for bed, but I wanted to play a game so I booted up Zombie Nation and MAN! I kind of loved it?
Beyond it's concept that will immediately stick in my head until the day I die, Zombie Nation has such a perfect hangoutitude to it. It's music is great and worth bopping along to. It's fast paced boss battle music belongs alongside the absolute best of obscure NES OST's. It's pixel art is great, as expected by any late-era NES title, but it stands out in particular with it's huge pillars of fire, beautiful boss sprites (to be fair, a lot of NES games have beautiful boss sprites in dark rooms but still absolutely suck, looking at Totally Rad here) and it's tinier details like it's start screen and it's health bar look brilliant (Those are some sick looking skeletons man).
It's gameplay might be hard to praise as highly as it's other elements, but it works. The presentation elevates the gameplay far higher than it has any actual right to. The debris flying off of buildings as you destroy them makes every shot feel more powerful. Explosions are huge, and it's giant health bar allows the player to keep track of their health despite the ensuing chaos on screen. Fighting against a waterfalls current as snakes try to attack you, or flying over giant goop monsters who you can't kill, the game has some real interesting ideas here. I'm by no means any sort of STG enthusiast, I've only really played a few NES titles (Abadox, 1943, half of Xexyz) but it is a genre I hope to dabble in more eventually (R-Type Final, ZeroRanger and DoDonpachi in particular stand outs as personal must-plays) and I can tell it doesn't live up to any sort of genre standards you would hope to see.
Zombie Nation excels at exactly what it sets out to do. It's a shooting game you can just hang out with, open up with the hopes of getting a little further (man it is real hard at times, but I wasn't deterred), and get out with the game having left some sort of impression on you. It's stylish, and it works real well. It's a game we might talk about as kusoge, or a game we laugh at derisively, but I loved my time with this. It's worth spending time with outside of it's unique premise.