I thought it would be fun to show the progression of zombies, graphics-wise, in video games from the 8-bit NES era to the present day:
Ghosts 'N Goblins For The NES
Zombies Ate My Neighbors For The SNES
Resident Evil For The PlayStation
House Of The Dead 2 For Dreamcast
Dead Rising 2 For Xbox 360 and PS3
Zombie Modes are everywhere!
I wanted to share with you an article by one of the editors over at IGN Australia discussing the emergence of a whole slew of upcoming releases that are said to include a Zombie Mode, as popularized by the Nazi Zombie mode in Call Of Duty: World At War, the game that stared it all.
In the article, Editor Stephen Lambrechts questions the necessity of Zombie Modes in video games, now seemingly “a required bullet-point on game development projects.”
Click here to read the editorial.
Wandered into Hot Topic the other day, where I found this on display:
Creepy!
It’s a tee shirt for AMC’s The Walking Dead featuring this year’s Comic Con exclusive “movie”poster by legendary artist Drew Struzan, best known for his work on movie posters for both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series, as well as Back To The Future, Big Trouble In Little China, An American Tail, and many more!
Awesome stuff!
(I ended up buying one, of course.)
I suppose it was inevitable.
It began with one isolated incident and from there quickly exploded, faster than anyone could have imagined.
Before long, they were everywhere. News media outlets ran stories covering the spread, but by then it was too late to stop it…
No, what you just read isn’t an excerpt from some cheesy, new piece of zombie fiction I’m working on.
Rather, it describes the seemingly endless stream of entries in the genre of literary-horror mashup, which began innocently enough in 2009 with Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride And Prejudice And Zombies which successfully merged Jane Austin’s classic with the modern, zombie horror novel.
The Patient Zero of literary-horror mashups, if you will.
Patient Zero
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., the fun guys (“fungi”s, get it?) and gals over at 4 color rebellion put together “25 Days Of Mario,” a celebration of the portly plumber-turned-adventure game hero consisting of a series of one-a-day, Mario-inspired images.
Josh Mirman contributed two pieces, “Zombie Mario” and “Zombie Wario.” Here’s “Zombie Wario”:
Nicely done, don’t you think?
Brains!? Where?!
Alright, scratch what I said the other day; Jeremy, like every other teen in America, besides being self-absorbed, is also fully aware of his parents’ “Zits Zombie Week”-long condition and is not above exploiting their undead hankering for brains (see above)…
I’m a big fan of Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman’s award-winning comic strip, Zits:
Zits Comic Strip From June 13, 2010
While not always “laugh out loud” funny, the popular syndicated strip, now more than 13 years old (it first debuted in 1997), is consistently amusing, with surprisingly insightful and witty observations on the life of a teenager in middle America, often paired with clever visual puns by the uber-talented Mr. Borgman.
So what, if anything, does any of this have to do with zombies?
The answer, my friends:
Today's Strip, Part Of Zits Zombie Week!
Now that everyone and their next door neighbor has a copy of Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide sitting on their bookshelf (zombie contingency plans seem to be all the rage now), being a zombie, and not getting your head blown off, has never been more difficult.
So Now You're A Zombie...
Enter John Austin’s latest, So Now You’re A Zombie: A Handbook For The Newly Undead, which aims to level the playing field a bit with all sorts of useful advice for the zombie newbie trying to get “a head” in this world (and the delicious brains contained within).
Over at the Inadawords official blog, I did a post about Andrew Bell’s ridiculously cool, undead Lego Men awhile back:
An undead Lego Zombie!
Two words.
Zombie. Ninja.
Zombie Ninja
Sweeeeet.
(By the by, anybody know who the artist might be? Looking to give credit where credit is due but can’t make out the artist’s sig…)