At a Glance: Meldac of America and Live Planning (two of the most well known and famous gaming companies EVER) proudly present “Zombie Nation,” a game that actually has a plot! You will play as a floating zombie head that shoots eyeballs and barfs all over the place while trying to save America from Darc Seed, a vaguely evil alien comet (or something). Throughout your mission you will battle everything from the US Army to overgrown reptiles. This is a very special game that is likely to make you want to become a gravity-defying zombie head so you can better fight for America!

Platform: NES (Download Emulator here - 192k)

Download: Download ROM here - 132k


The Japanese version of the Statue of Liberty is way better than ours.Game Plot: Finally, a game that I didn’t have to create a plot for! Here's the entire story, copied directly from the game:

“1999- What appeared to be a harmless meteorite crashing in the Nevada desert had turned out to be Darc Seed, an evil alien creature with horrible powers. By shooting strange magnetic rays, Darc Seed had turned the helpless nation into zombies and brought the Statue of Liberty to life to do his dirty work. These rays also gave him control over many deadly weapons, but none were more powerful than the legendary samurai sword, Shura. When the great head of the samurai, Namakubi heard that the sword had fallen into evil hands, he set off immediately for the United States. For only he possessed the strength and knowledge needed to recapture the magical sword and free the U.S. from the evil clutches of Darc Seed.”

So why are you a floating, retching, red zombie head again?

Weapons: With so much talk of a magical sword, I couldn't wait to actually see it and try it out! However, I was shocked to find out that there isn’t a sword in the game at all; the introduction was a complete lie! I feel violated! Since you are a stupid floating zombie head, you do not get many weapons, much less magic swords. In fact, the only weapons you are able to use are your eyeballs and toxic barf (yes, this is very logical when you do not have a stomach or throat to pull the digested food up from). 

It also appears that zombies have an unlimited amount of eyeballs stashed in their heads, very special zombie eyeballs that slightly injure everything. You see, these eyes have the ability to angle themselves at approaching enemies, which (needless to say) is very helpful on your journey through America and God knows where else. Most enemies will need to be hit with several loads of barf and a wheelbarrow full of eyeballs in order for you to do any damage to them, and thus you will notice your “weapons” are rather useless. On the plus side, you can use your “weapons” to destroy most of the buildings in the game, and upon blowing up the buildings, you’ll see the occasional human fly out from the rubble and cry, “Help.” It’s all so very exciting and realistic!

Enemies: You will encounter a variety of enemies in this game. In the first level, you fight standard crap like tanks and small planes while trying to dodge balls that are thrown by superhuman dancing Nazi ballerinas on the rooftops. Next thing you know, pink blimps are trying to kill you. I have no idea where the pink blimps came from, but things just seem to get worse and worse as the game progresses. In the second level, there are flying birds that shoot fireball things, and lightning strikes from the sky, so you have to try and avoid that as well. Upon breaking some of the stones in level two, you will also see humans fly out and attack you. You know, because humans have always lived inside rocks. After that, you will encounter large snakes, piranhas, and very small humans on rafts. Then you go and fight more military objects: tanks, planes, marines, etc, etc. Then you find yourself battling unnamed creatures in what could only be described as hell, or the inside of somebody's gall bladder. This game has it all!

As you are probably well aware of, dancing homosexual elderly men simply hate floating zombie heads!Number of Levels: There are six stages, with most of them containing three parts. The usual setup was: pointless stage, pointless stage, and then a boss stage. Anyway, you will travel through the city, mountains, rivers, hell, and even outer space for some reason. Most of the levels had some type of breakable substance that you could destroy in order to send humans flying all over the place, which is apparently the goal of floating zombie heads everywhere. You can actually eat the humans that you blast out of the destructible walls and stones, but since you are supposed to be trying to save the human race, this doesn’t really make much sense. So don't eat the humans. You will find that most of the stages in this game are really easy, and the difficult part is trying to dodge the myriad of enemies and lightning bolts on the screen.

Number of Bosses: This game had some pretty unique bosses. You will fight the Japanese version of the Statue of Liberty (which has snakes for hair and blows bubbles from it’s mouth), semicircles, old men, and the ever popular alien fiends. My favorite boss was the old man. He was wearing nothing except underwear, probably so I would be easily intimidated by his ferocious muscles. The old man would throw three axes (which would spin around and follow me as I attempted to dodge them) and then proceed to do his very special dance (keep in mind that he is still in his underwear). There was obviously nothing homosexual going on in the minds of the developers! The final boss was a joke. It was your typical green alien, except he was lying on his back and was protected by six or eight blue, oblong testicles that shot fireballs. You can easily defeat the end guy by moving right next to him and attacking as fast as possible; he will be dead before the testicles even realize you are there.

Defining Moment: This game was very special, it is difficult to try and choose one defining moment when so many come to mind. I would have to say the best moment for me was battling the level five boss. You see, the boss round didn’t start off like normal. It began with swarms of airplanes attacking me, and then next thing I knew I was floating over a ship. The ship was heavily guarded with marines that threw fireballs, and there were large airplanes attacking me from above with fireballs as well. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, I noticed that there were several green fireball launching turrets on the ground. After quickly trying to maneuver through the turrets I reached a dead end. There was a little place underneath the ship I could go into, so I did. The screen started slowly moving back and forth, causing me to float uncontrollably through the little space I had entered. There was a semicircle at the end of the little tunnel, and in the middle of the tunnel was a rotating spike object. Since the screen was floating back and forth, I was forced to try to dodge my way around the spike, and then try to kill the semicircle. After dodging the spike ball about fifty-million times, I finally hit the semicircle with enough barf and eyeballs to destroy it. What was it? I will never know.

If you would like to emulate the joy of “Zombie Nation,” I suggest you cut off your head, steal your friends' eyeballs and generate a lot of puke, and then go fly up to the Statue of Liberty and try to destroy it. Try not to draw a lot of attention in the process of doing this. It will probably be somewhat difficult, with you being a dead flying head and all, but you do not want the humans of the world to see you or else they will call the army and eventually banish you to hell so you will have to battle the mystical water birds and dangerous testicles!

***NOTE***: The above mentioned is purely theoretical. Cutting off your head may not make you a zombie. Do so at your own risk!

Graphics-8
Gameplay-8
Story-5
Sound-8
Fun-8
Overall-36

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Hannya (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)

More Rom Pit

This Week on Something Awful...

  • Pardon Our Dust

    Pardon Our Dust

    Something Awful is in the process of changing hands to a new owner. In the meantime we're pausing all updates and halting production on our propaganda comic partnership with Northrop Grumman.

  • DEAR FURRIES: WE WERE WRONG

    DEAR FURRIES: WE WERE WRONG

    Dear god this was an embarrassment to not only this site, but to all mankind

About This Column

The Rom Pit is dedicated to reviewing the most bizarre and screwed up classic console games from the 1980's, the ones that made you wonder what kind of illegal substances the programmers were smoking when they worked on them. Strangely enough, the same illegal substances are often necessary to enjoy or make sense of most of these titles. No horrible Nintendo game is safe from the justice of the ROM Pit.

Previous Articles

Suggested Articles

Copyright ©2024 Jeffrey "of" YOSPOS & Something Awful