Zombie Raid is a first-person arcade lightgun shooter for one or two simultaneous players. It was developed and distributed by American Sammy in 1996.

The game features five horror-themed stages with on-rails camera movement, with the aim being: to blast your way through waves of attackers and to survive for as long as possible. Each player has a damage meter at the top of the screen and an ammo count at the bottom.

The cabinet had two mounted shotguns with a pump-action reload barrel. The default weapon is of course a shotgun, but you can also collect and use more powerful weapons as well.

Zombie Raid features comic book-style graphics and atmospheric backdrops. Shooting enemies enough times usually results in them exploding in a pile of guts, but you can also shoot off heads and thrown knives, stakes, and other projectiles, before they hit you (in much the same way as you can in Operation Wolf). Occasionally you’ll also get to shoot dynamite to clear a screen of enemies.

When you run out of ammo the game says “pump up!“, instead of “reload!“, which means that you have to pump the front of the cabinet-mounted shotgun to replenish your magazine.

One important aspect of the gameplay is to avoid shooting innocents who are captured, are escaping, or just like to get in the way to annoy you. If you accidentally (or deliberately) shoot an innocent bystander you’ll get a health penalty and lose any weapon enhancements you have.

Zombie Raid has some nice touches, like the movie title intro (which you can play over); the shells exploding when shooting, and the cool animation when reloading, but overall it feels like a failed effort next to the competition of the time. The game is too difficult for one player alone (forcing you to pump coins into it to continue, or play with another player – for double the money), and the boss battles I thought were tedious. It’s also a surprisingly low-scoring game, and you don’t even see your score until mid-level breaks, or the end of the game, so you don’t even know what you’re scoring until it’s all over.

I also didn’t like the art style of the game. While there are a few decent moments, the general style of the character graphics seemed somewhat amateurish to me. Maybe I’m just expecting too much, but when you’ve grown up on the comic art of Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, Frank Miller and Massimo Bellardinelli, then the artwork in Zombie Raid just seems weak in comparison.

Zombie Raid does have some good ideas, but the execution lets it down. This could have been epic, but the end result is unfortunately just middle-of-the-road and disappointing.

More: Zombie Raid on Wikipedia