Zombie Revenge (Sega Dreamcast)
Do you really need an excuse to beat up zombie’s with guns?
Zombie Revenge on the Sega Dreamcast might be the perfect game for Halloween. Retro video game fans, get excited. It’s a 3D beat ’em up. A genre that can be declared dead, but this game won’t overstay its welcome. It’s short, it’s hard and initially, it seems very simple. Ported directly from Sega arcade hardware, it’s repetitious and self-aware, but the action is all about the spectacle. Every-time I play through, I discover new moves. Or a new weapon to help put the dead back to sleep.
Best way to experience Zombie Revenge is via the Japanese release for Dreamcast. Outside the menus, the game is mostly in English. But with one major benefit. Unlimited continues.
As an arcade game, Zombie Revenge is unforgiving. While you can still set your continue limit, for casual bouts with friends, unlimited continues mean you can at least see it through to the end and compare scores.
Zombie Revenge is a spin-off from one of Sega’s most prestigious horror-franchises, The House of the Dead. Fans of the original House of the Dead game will get a kick when Curien Mansion comes into view. Watching the camera swing down and mimic a first person view as you enter the mansion is one of the most memorable moments in the game.
So does a House of the Dead game work as a beat ’em up? Surprisingly well. Considering the genre itself became increasingly dated as it moved into 3D, Zombie Revenge is solid enough but the action will get repetitive (especially if you’re on your own).
But for me, the single biggest oversight is the lack of branching pathways. Zombie Revenge has a fair share of hidden rooms with unique weapons but the replay value is severely hindered by the lack of an alternative route.
Is Zombie Revenge worth playing through on the Dreamcast? Despite the downfalls, I’d recommend checking it out, especially on Halloween. It’s quick and easy to play (but not easy to finish) and whether you’re a fan of the series or not, it’s certainly action-packed with a so-bad-it’s-good B-grade movie vibe. The action is constant, the zombies are well armed and I love how focused the game is on the action. Typical for the House of the Dead games, even with the undead enemies, there’s not as much focus on the horror elements as there is on the action.
Training Room and the Zombie Revenge VMU Mini-Games
The VMU mini-game associated with Zombie Revenge has easily been one of the biggest hurdles in producing this review. When I reviewed Sonic Adventure, I gave the Tamagotchi-styled Chao Adventure VMU mini-games a foot-note towards the end of the video but I wanted to do a little better for Zombie Revenge. I tried numerous methods to get it working but outside the official Zombie revenge manual, there’s not much actual information on its mini-games (and plenty of misinformation).
So how did I eventually get the Zombie Raising Mini-Game to work (along with the Zombie Fishing and Doubt games)? I simply installed it on a VMU without relying on emulators (neither Dreamcast or VMU emulators).
Originally, I was very persistent in using an emulator just for the quality of the recording but I found that trying to play Zombie Raising through a VMU emulator ALWAYS made it run fast (regardless if it was through nullDC, actual Dreamcast hardware or even dedicated VMU emulators like directVMU, SoftVMU, KUM Android VMU Emulator).
Even if you can theoretically get it working, I was incredibly frustrated by how ingrained the Tamagotchi gameplay is with the Zombie Fishing and Zombie Doubt mini-games. If I loaded the mini-game onto my VMU using the VMU Dream Explorer, I found I would get messages like “Retire”, Parameters would display and I’d be asked to Save my data back to the system. Very frustrating.
It turns out, the Zombie Fishing and Zombie Doubt mini-games are ways to train your character. Once their experience reaches 100 (in the Parameters), you can’t access the mini-games at all. When I loaded this game from the Dream Explorer tool (or found my very own Zombie Raising VMS/VMI files), the character was ‘exhausted’ and ready to be returned to the game.
It complicated the situation personally when all my VMU text was in Japanese, but if you do a fresh-install of the mini-game and play it straight away off your VMU, you should be able to access all the options and play one or two of the games before your character needs to be fed. On the VMU screen, the top option allows you to feed your character, the middle option takes you to the mini-games and the final option displays your parameters.
Satisfying all the criteria to use this mini-game can be a real pain, personally I’d love some stand-alone mini-games, but the feature where you find food in-game to use on the VMU is certainly an interesting twist. I believe the games themselves are worth playing, but due to the roadblocks around training and keeping your character happy, I couldn’t see myself going through the effort frequently.
If anything, exploring the VMU Dream Explorer, going through the effort of buying batteries and actually using the VMU hardware gave me a certain amount of appreciation for it.
