Zombie Nation.. is just a really, really strange game. You are a giant severed samurai head, who comes to defeat an alien menace who has landed in the United States - because of a stolen samurai sword, apparently. This plot makes no sense, but it certainly is ambitious in flying its freak flag.

You, as a giant flying head; fight army vehicles, monsters and some rather ridiculous bosses with your spit. That's right, its a shooter. You barf and spit out stuff that explodes, and your eyeballs apparently are also dangerous weapons.  Sadly, what one would expect most, a bunch of zombies for you to kill, especially based on the cheesy box art - doesn't seem to be so. In fact, the zombie head of our samurai warrior seems to be the only undead spirit that is worth mentioning. Aw, man!


Graphics: 5
This is a really mixed bag. Some stages, like level 2, with its overly detailed canyon background - complete with raging lightning storm - is well done for NES graphics. Then you reach that second stage boss, and he looks, well.. horrible. The depth perception is also right off in this game, as you will see small soldiers on rooftops firing at you, but then smaller helicopters that they in no way could fit flying by. The zombie head and the bright lights of some stages make me want to err on the side of a slightly higher score. I did enjoy seeing spotlights and tall towers of New York, and having a very unique NY boss was unexpected, but amusing.  Of our barfing, samurai head - the detail on the head is nice, thankfully not so much attention paid to his gross projectiles.  

But the game has some serious graphic glitching with all the things flying on the screen. The bosses are large but lacking detail, and fought against a plain background.  The game over screen is particularly cheap looking. And wait, this game looks familiar...

Wait.. do I smell a rat?

Just looking at a second of Zombie Nation's gameplay compared to the NES Godzilla game, and you can see obvious comparisons. Strangely the companies developing this game made very similar side-scrolling, building destroying monster games. I did enjoy Godzilla Monster of Monsters more, but this game at least gives you the benefit of being a much smaller target. Why does this game play so much like Godzilla? I'm not quite sure - the company who made this didn't make very many games.


Sound: 4
The music, plainly, is not good. Missile weapons make a variety of bleeps and bloops at you, almost at home in the Atari age. The strange screeching when you kill enemy foot soldiers is especially unpleasant. The menacing jaws-like theme that plays when you're almost dead is something you should probably expect to hear at least once a level. The regular music is rather generic in what you can hear over the almost constant explosions of rock and building around you.

Addictiveness: 6
Once you see this weird game in action, and see the first stage boss, it made me more interested to see what other zany stuff the game would come up with. You only get one life, but do have multiple continues  - however you have to wait for the game over screen to be spelled out for you. 

Story: 6
This story makes no sense. None at all. You are revenging your samurai spirit over a sword, that you don't see taken, but somehow know the evil alien has it. The game does have a intro movie, but why just the head of our hero? Where is the rest of him? Why is the head so big? Who is that old guy in the diaper who attacks us with axes in stage 2? WHY IS THERE A STICK FIGURE GUY ON A RAFT WHO TAKES MORE HITS TO KILL THAN A GIANT SNAKE? The world will never know. I do have to give it credit for daring to be so different. Its insane, almost on a parody level, if only we knew what the joke was!


Depth: 3
Well, you get to choose what stage you start with, but then it takes over from there. And .. you have one button to hold down the whole game.  And .. yeah. The game's biggest drawback is how simple the whole game is.  There is only one attack button, the only other controls are moving the head around. You can blow up pretty much anything, and it might drop a falling human who screams "HELP!" - this will power up your shot to add more projectiles. You have a life bar, but for the LIFE of me (see what I did there?) I cannot fathom why its there. You seem to take an inordinate amount of bullets before showing damage - however there are always a handful of things in a stage that take your life right down to critical levels in one hit. I could not figure out how it worked, or why have it when you have the music to go along with your near (and second) death. The bosses are rather simple and none of the enemies show any type of tactic other than to move towards or away from you, shooting.


Difficulty: 6
Make no mistake, this game can be hard. Like the NES Silver Surfer, there are some elements that look like background that can actually hurt you. The spotlights, lightning bolts that periodically flash on stages actually will almost kill you if you run through them, and are a leading cause of death. You should actually spend most of your time navigating through them. After completing several levels in a stage, you will fight a boss. The bosses are for the most part, very simple - but a few have one hit kill attacks.

Overall : 5.3
This is one really unique game. Its not necessarily a good game even, as its repetitive, and lacking thrills. It would make a great B movie, which I think is the vibe they were going for here. And while this is overall a fairly sub-par game - weirdness aside, isn't it enough to tell gamers "Oh, that game where you're a giant puking samurai head and you go stop that alien who stole your samurai sword and took it to America and you had to fight the whole army and national monuments to get it back? Yeah, I totally played that." Because that is Zombie Nation'd best resource - its campiness.