What Does Everybody Want? BRAINS!
Understanding the roots of zombie games is crucial as we appreciate their evolution over time. And as we trace the lineage of zombie games, we see a remarkable evolution. The genre expanded significantly through titles like “Resident Evil” and “Left 4 Dead,” which introduced intricate narratives and immersive experiences. These advancements have transformed how players engage with horror themes, pushing boundaries in both storytelling and gameplay mechanics. But understanding this evolution is crucial not just for gamers but also for developers who aspire to create compelling new titles within this beloved genre.
Some sources claim that the first video game to feature zombies is the 1984 computer game “Zombie” by British video game developer Mikro-Gen. Zombie was developed and ported for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64 platforms during the early 1980s, a time when home computers were becoming more widely available, and the gaming industry was expanding rapidly.
The game itself was designed to be a top-down, maze-like survival game where the player navigates through a zombie-infested environment. Taking on the role of a survivor trying to escape from a house overrun by zombies, players must find keys and other items while avoiding or defeating the zombies. The game’s premise revolves around trying to escape from the house and survive the zombie onslaught outside, with the zombies themselves being a constant threat.
In Your Head, In Your Head
Other sources claim another 1984 computer game for the ZX Spectrum called “Zombie, Zombie” is the first video game of the genre. Developed by Spaceman Ltd and published by Quicksilva, Zombie, Zombie includes a helicopter, which can be piloted and used to alter the architecture by lifting and dropping bricks.
In Zombie, Zombie, the player is alone in a partially walled city infested with zombies. The player must lure the zombies into following them and then trick them into falling off the edge of tall structures more than three blocks high. The player must get close enough to the zombies to attract their attention, but not so close as to be overwhelmed and become a zombie themself.
But what if I told you that both sources are completely wrong and the first official zombie video game ever is an obscure, but fascinating, Atari 2600 title from 1982 called Entombed.
These Guys Are After You!
Entombed is an Atari 2600 game designed by Tom Sloper and programmed by Steven Sidley. It was released in 1982 by California company U.S. Games. U.S. Games was acquired by cereal company Quaker Oats that same year to develop games for the Atari 2600. Quaker purchased U.S. Games to work with its Fisher-Price toy brand and compete with rival cereal company General Mills‘s Parker Brothers division but was not as successful.
In Entombed, the player moves downward through a continuously vertically-scrolling maze with vertical symmetry, trying to get as far as possible while avoiding zombies that move across the screen; if the player contacts a zombie, they die and the game is over.
If there is any doubt that the enemies of Entombed are zombies or not, the instruction manual included in the game reads as follows: “You and your team of archaeologists have fallen into the catacombs of the zombies. There’s no time to look around; these guys are after you, and they mean business!”
Your Only Salvation
The maze will continually scroll upwards on the screen, and while the player can move in any direction, this scrolling action may leave the player stuck in a dead-end; if the player’s position scrolls off-screen, then the game is also over. The player can collect a “make-break” item, represented by a large dot, that can remove a wall space and allow the player to proceed out of a dead-end.
This is explained further in the instructions which read, “Your only salvation is that you have discovered the secret to the “make-break.” Grab them, and you can break through walls when you get stuck, or create a wall behind you – if you are being chased. The longer you survive, the faster you have to move.”
And if the zombies weren’t hard enough to battle, in Entombed; if the player’s position scrolls off-screen, then the game is also over.
But Entombed is famous for more than being just the first zombie video game ever. The game’s perplexing maze generation algorithm has attracted academic study. According to Wikipedia, The mechanics of how Entombed generated its mazes have been the subject of academic research and some legend, as the maze data itself, if stored directly, was too large to fit within the hardware limitations of the console.
A Mysterious Creation
Researchers evaluated the game’s ROM and discovered that the mazes were generated on-the-fly by the game using the state of five adjacent squares of the maze already generated to determine the next part of the maze through a lookup table. That meant that sometimes the table generates mazes that are unsolvable. Thus, the convenience of possessing the “make-break” item.
Adding more mystery and intrigue to Entombed, the game’s programmer Steven Sidley claims the game’s impossible algorithm wasn’t even his design, but rather was created by a mysterious unknown and unnamed programmer who Sidley was quoted as saying came up with the algorithm while blackout drunk at a bar in the early 1980s.
Regarding the mysterious programmer, Sidley said “He told me it came upon him when he was drunk and whacked out of his brain.” Video game historians are still fascinated by this first zombie game to this day. A 2021 paper by Leon Mächler and David Naccache, described the algorithm for generating Entombed’s lookup table and a 2022 publication co-authored by Paul Allen Newell has come as close to settling the debate about the mysteries of the maze algorithm itself as ever so far.
Why Did the Zombie Cross the Road?
But what is a zombie, if not a reanimated corpse? If we use that definition, then there is an even earlier game made the year before that may be considered the first zombie video game ever. But this game requires a bit of a backstory explanation.
Freeway, an action video game written by legendary programmer David Crane for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1981. In Freeway, one or two players control chickens who cross a ten-lane highway filled with traffic. The goal is to set a high score in an allotted time. Every time a chicken gets across a point is earned for that player. Depending on the difficulty mode, a chicken is forced back a lane or sent back to the bottom of the screen when hit by a vehicle.
A Bloody Good Time
This kid-friendly Atari 2600 game is the final version of a much darker game. Bloody Human Freeway is a beta version of Freeway which contains a human who turns into blood splatters when being hit by cars instead of just being forced back down the screen. After a momentary pause, the character regenerates in the spot of his untimely accident and is free to continue his course to the top of the television screen.
Following disputes over pay, David Crane and several programmers left Atari, Inc. to form Activision. Freeway was Crane’s fourth title for Activision. His magnum opus, Pitfall! would follow in 1982. It was his seventh game overall, after designing three games for Atari, Inc. in 1978 and 1979.
Pitfalls & Possibilities
In 1981, Crane stated that he and some friends attempted to cross Chicago’s busiest thoroughfare after exiting the wrong end of a building. While trying to cross, one of his friends joked that such a predicament would make a great video game. According to Wikipedia, game designer Larry Kaplan stated he was riding a bus and witnessed someone attempting to cross Lake Shore Drive and, after discussing the incident with Crane, Crane decided to develop the notion into a video game.
Adding more confusion to the inspiration for Bloody Human Freeway, in an interview with Retro Gamer published in 2011, Crane stated that the idea for the game came from an experience at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago where he spotted someone parking a mile from the convention center scaling a fence and dodging several lanes of traffic on Lake Shore Drive, including a bus that Crane was riding in.
Did Activision Chicken Out?
Bloody Human Freeway initially had two men competing to move from the bottom of the screen to the top as many times as possible in two minutes. Three days before an upcoming Consumer Electronics show, Activision’s CEO Jim Levy suggested changing the characters in the game into chickens. Levy’s suggestion was so that the company could market the game with someone wearing a chicken suit at the convention center and that it would fit a theme of the “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke.
Freeway is often compared to the arcade game Frogger (1981). When asked which idea was developed first, Crane responded “The simple answer is neither. These two games were developed in secure laboratories 6,000 miles apart, right around the same time.”
Although never officially released, the Bloody Human Freeway Atari 2600 prototype has been discovered and released online where, with a simple internet search, anyone can find the game and download it for gameplay.
No Guts, No Glory
Not only could Bloody Human Freeway be considered the first zombie video game, considering after being splattered on the open road, each player rises to continue his objective of reaching one end of the freeway to another. But it might also be the first video game to incorporate human bloodshed. So congratulations, Atari 2600. Between Bloody Human Freeway and Entombed, you earn the right to call yourself the gaming system that started the zombie video game genre.