Before Romero, or the discovery of any of the classic zombie movies at Blockbuster Video (RIP), cutting down zombies with a light gun in House of the Dead was my induction to the genre. Playing this at an arcade was my first introduction to zombies. Richard Newby: The first time I encountered that specific feeling that you’re speaking of was Sega’s The House of the Dead in 1996. No other media can capture that visceral feeling of being hunted quite like video games. However they are presented, the end result is the same: run and gun for survival. They can swarm in hordes, they can lurk in shadows. They can be undead, they can be infected. Debates wage daily over what exactly qualifies as a zombie, but the central themes and aesthetics of the genre are widely agreed upon: animalistic versions of what were once human beings, thirsty for blood and violence, that now represent the majority of humanity in a post-Apocalyptic imagining of our own society.
Perhaps one of the greatest offerings of the genre - and it is a genre at this point, let’s be clear - is the freedom of interpretation. From arcade classics like the House of the Dead to recent AAA console titles like The Last of Us series and this week’s Days Gone, “zombie” lore has been explored and extrapolated through games for decades. Patrick Shanley: As in film, zombies are a topic rife for interpretation in the video game world.