Time doesn’t travel so fast when you’re one of the undead, but it’s been more than a week since we announced House of the Dead: OVERKILL to an unsuspecting public. The fan feedback has been so far - well, sensational really. Everyone went completely barmy when the trailer went live on YouTube, and it becoming Top Rated in Gaming in the UK. Comments such as:
“That was so incredibly brilliant. Definitely the best trailer I’ve seen in a long time.”

Make us feel quite gooey inside…

Well, seeing as there’s clearly quite a lot of zombie love out there, we felt it appropriate to join in by listing some of our favourite zombie related games. There’s quite a few, and some of the most successful gaming franchises have come out of a combination of shotguns, serious amounts of gore and a whole load of walking corpses. So, without further ado, here’s a list of some of our favourite titles:

Zombies Ate My Neighbours
It’s not exactly the dark game that you expect in a terrifying zombified list, but when trying to think of zombie games that I’ve loved and still love, this one really stuck in my mind. It’s got the great quality game play that you can always rely on from classic Mega Drive and SNES games - and it runs a little like the Amiga stalwart: Commando. You simply run around a graveyard/Egyptian tomb/something weirder bumping into things to ‘rescue’ stricken cheerleaders, school teachers and other hapless humans. In the process, zombies appear from absolutely everywhere and you have to send them back from whence they came with some great weapons. Fire extinguisher anyone? It’s cheesy nonsense with great graphics considering its age.

The House of the Dead
A zombie top five, especially a zombie top five on SEGA’s own blog wouldn’t be complete without The House of the Dead. For simple, instant action, it doesn’t get any better than this series. Everyone has their favourite of the series, me, I just like shooting stuff, undead stuff preferably and so I’m happy to play any of them. The thrills come thick and fast in these “on-the-rails” arcade (and home conversions) classics, and they’re a must play when visiting any seaside arcade in the UK. I’m really excited about our forthcoming game in the series, which is set before the first game and stars everybody’s favourite one-letter agent “G”. Don’t suffer like G did; give it a look when it arrives next year.

Resident Evil
Now I know a lot of people love Resident Evil IV and all its newness, but I’m not sure I’ll ever beat the nameless dread that I felt walking down a silent corridor armed only with a knife and a lock picking set, before two mutated zombie dogs burst through the windows barking out of their slavering jaws. The first of the Resident Evil series spawned the rest through its creepy music and settings, moments of total panic and colossal body count…. and that’s not to mention the shotguns, red and green herbs, giant snakes, spiders, sharks, crazed crows and a whole lot of seriously corny acting (about 1minute into the video below) that gave players a comic respite from the brutal proceedings. Oh yeah, there’s a LOT of zombies in it too.

Dead Rising
I was so excited when Dead Rising was announced, and leapt on the demo when it became available; I wasn’t disappointed. Dead Rising is essentially George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead movie as a videogame. Imagine if you will, being stranded in an out-of city American shopping mall where the dead are walking around like they’re at an all you can eat buffet. I’m not talking about a couple of zombies here and there, we’re talking hundreds all after a slice of thigh. As the role of a photographer, it is your job to take photos of key events in a time window while rescuing others who are stranded at different locations in the mall. At your disposal are all the stock from all the shops and cafes in the mall. So, if you fancy throwing CDs at the zombies you can, however a nice katana blade conveniently located on a café canopy would probably be better. A stand out moment for me is mowing down undead pedestrians with a shopping trolley full of sharp things.

As a side note, Dawn of the Dead starred one of my favourite special effects guys/actors Tom Savini, who has starred in quite a few zombie flicks over the years including, Dawn of the Dead (both versions), From Dusk Till Dawn, Children of the Living Dead, Land of the Dead and Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse horror homage).

There’s always room for one more… *The Last Guy
This is a very new addition to the ever-growing list of games that feature zombies, and for me it’s a must-include on this list. It doesn’t have the graphical qualities of say Dead Rising, or the pant-wetting scares of Resident Evil, but it does have three very good things going for it.

1) Zombies (a must have in this list)
2) It’s immensely enjoyable (a requirement for all video games in my book)
3) It’s incredibly cheap at just £4.99 ($9.99) (we are in a credit crunch after all)

For those not familiar with the title, and I expect that to be quite a few of you given that the game has only just surfaced on these shores, let me explain. This PS3 exclusive title has a very simple concept; save the residents of real-world locations from the on-coming zombie and monster menagerie by herding them to a safe zone within a given timeframe. Imagine if you will, herding tiny pixel people round a Google Map while trying to avoid getting eaten. There’s a lot more to it than just herding hordes of humans; you get more points by saving more people at once and you can also pick up items including speed boosts, temporary invisibility and a zombie-halting power-up that’ll stop the beasties in their tracks for a short while. It may not be the scariest zombie-fest out there, but it is very enjoyable. The Last Guy is only available to buy via Sony’s PLAYSTATION 3 Network (PSN). If you’ve got a PS3, get downloading the demo today.

So, those who’ve dared to tread so far - what are your favourite zombie games??

As part of a continued look at Samba de Amigo, enjoy the next Developer Diary straight from Allison Berryman, Community Manager at Gearbox Software!

So, over to you Allison…

If you read the last Samba de Amigo developer’s diary, you know how the idea to put the game on the Wii went from being just a gleam in Gearbox’s eye to development reality. What does it take to capture the fun of a game like Samba and transfer the magic to a new console and audience? In this diary, we’ll talk about how Gearbox and SEGA worked together to bring Samba into the next generation!

A Fresh Look
Samba de Amigo for the Wii is much more than just a port of the Dreamcast original. After spending countless hours shaking maracas to the original Samba and the Japanese-only Ver. 2000 (a follow-up game that added several new features and songs), the team enjoyed some well-deserved arm resting and sat down to plan. “We built a giant wishlist of features we wanted to add based on the opinions of our team and original Samba players,” describes Tom Mustaine, Producer on the project. “We then worked with SEGA to determine which features would be the best for the game and came up with a list that felt good.” It must have been an enormous list, because the amount of features that ended up in the game is impressive!

What’s New?
So, what features and updates did the team create for Samba? As more than just a port and even more than a hybrid of the earlier Samba releases, you can expect to see tons of new features along with recognizable Samba standbys.

First off, all of the art in the game has been re-visualized and updated from its Dreamcast source. This means smoother, prettier, and even more vibrant environments and characters! All of the original stages we re-built from the ground up, re-lit, and re-animated, so expect your favourite locations to be back and livelier than ever! The artists also remodelled all of the characters, who are now higher-poly and much better-looking. The entire game has received a graphical facelift for its new home on the Wii.

On the gameplay front, there’s a balanced mix of classic Samba and new additions. There are more than 40 songs in the game, of which more than half are brand new. All the game modes are back; Original, Hustle, and Volleyball are all available. We’ve even added a new career mode where players progress through and unlock new game elements and a training mode where new players and veterans alike can learn everything from the basics of playing Samba to advanced techniques. There are three completely new stages, two new characters for you to meet, and two new minigames to play!

We’re very proud to be the first game officially offering downloadable content on the Wii – rhythm games have become increasingly popular and we know how important it is that new content is available to players. It’s exciting to be able to offer the Wii audience new songs to keep the Samba experience fresh and fun. You’ll also notice that even though Samba is a third-party title, we were allowed to use Nintendo’s Miis in the game. Most third-party games aren’t able to, but Samba fits the Wii so perfectly that Nintendo gave us the go ahead! The game will also take advantage of the Friend Roster and Leaderboards, using everything the console has to offer.

Oh, and not to mention the brand new Wii controls – but I’ll save that for its own article!

Fun Factor
Yes, it’s an impressive list of features and updates, but is the game fun? Do all those features come together the right way to deliver the Samba experience of a vibrant, eccentric, and entertaining rhythm game? These thoughts were always on the team’s mind as they set to work creating the game. “We had people constantly playing the game from the moment it was up and running on the Wii,” Tom Mustaine emphasizes heavily how important playtesting was to the process of creating the game. “To gauge the opinions about the Wii version, we created playtesting sessions that included folks who had played the original games only a few times alongside hardcore Samba fans that had mastered the original. Using the data from these different types of players, we were able to make sure the game felt rock solid for the new player and hardcore Samba fan alike.”

The teams at SEGA of America, Europe, and Japan were also crucial to ensuring the game was perfect. SEGA of America and SEGA Europe helped ensure that the game would be fresh, fun, and accessible to new players, and that the music selection was enjoyable and a good fit for the game. The Japanese team included many individuals who had worked on the Dreamcast games from Sonic Team who were absolutely essential in ensuring that the Wii game lived up to the original’s standard. Everyone involved really cared about bringing the game up-to-date and keeping it fun, and their efforts really show.

Controls?
In the next dev diary, we’ll discuss one of our biggest concerns (and probably yours, too) during development: the controls! Learn how the dev team rose to the challenge of translating maracas to Wii Remotes, the challenges of motion-based control, and how success was finally met!

You might have seen my last post about tea making… Basically it’s a flash game competition with the person who does the worst having to get up and make the delicious tea. We play many games, but one of my personal favourites is the helicopter game. All you have to do is click to make the chopper go up, and let go to make it go down. Superbly simple, it may well spend the end of your working day if you’re not careful. I think at Uni I managed to get somewhere around the 2000 mark, but I can’t remember the exact score. Nowadays my best is 1488, but the office record is something like 2200, set by Dave, who has quite a penchant for all these mini games. If you can beat that, then I’d like to know, you might even get a present in the post! You must supply evidence of course - just print screen and to record your PB. And no Photoshopping!

The time of maraca shaking shenanigans is almost here, and to get you into the party spirit we’ve got the complete song list for Samba de Amigo.

Do you have a personal favourite? I’m going to be assuming the pose and waggling my wiimotes to Tubthumping, Asereje (the ketchup song) and Groove Is In the Heart. If you’re lucky, I may wear my traditional ninja suit and capture some video footage of me grooving to the Gypsy Kings for you all to laugh at.

Returning Classic songs from the original Samba de Amigo:

Vamos A Carnaval – WaveMaster*
Volare – Gypsy Kings
Hot Hot Hot – Arrow*
Salome – Chayanne*
Tubthumping – Chumbawumba*
The Cup of Life – R. Martin*
Samba de Janeiro – Bellini
Mambo Beat – Perez Prado*
Livin’ La Vida Loca – Ricky Martin*
Bamboleo – Gipsy Kings
Take On Me – Reel Big Fish
El Ritmo Tropical – Dixie’s Gang*
Macarena – Los Del Rio*
La Bamba – Ritchie Valens*
Tequila – Chuck Rio*
Soul Bossa Nova – Quincy Jones
Samba De Amigo – Bellini
The Theme of Rocky – Bill Conti*
Mas Que Nada – Jorge Ben*
Sway – Gimbel and Ruiz*
El Mambo – Solemar

All-New Wii-Exclusive Songs:

Baila Me – Gipsy Kings
Papa Loves Mambo – Perry Como*
Mambo No. 8 – Perez Prado
Conga – Miami Sound Machine*
Low Rider – War
Mambo No. 5 – Lou Bega*
Oye Como Va – Santana*
Asereje – Las Ketchup*
Arriba Allez – Bellini
Magalenha – Bellini and Mondonca Do Rio
Ran Kan Ran – Tito Puento*
Groove Is In the Heart – Dee Lite
Jump in the Line – Harry Belafonte*
Do It Well – Jennifer Lopez*
Como Ves – Ozomatli
Cha Cha – Chelo
Pon de Replay – Rihanna
Smooth – Santana*
Mexican Flyer – Ken Woodman*
Borriquito – Charo
Un Aguardiente – WaveGroup
Solo Tu – WaveGroup
Tango With Me – WaveGroup

* Denotes the song is performed by a cover band

I’m very excited to be able to finally shout about our new game The House of the Dead: OVERKILL for the Nintendo Wii.

The House of the Dead: OVERKILL charges you with mowing down waves of infected, blood-thirsty zombies in a last-ditch effort to survive Bayou City and uncover the horrific truth behind the origins of The House of the Dead.

Survival horror as it’s never been seen before! A pulp-style take on the classic SEGA light-gun shoot ‘em up franchise. Back when the famous Agent G was still fresh out of the academy, he teamed up with hard-boiled bad-ass Agent Washington to investigate stories of mysterious disappearances in small-town Louisiana. Little did they know what blood-soaked mutant horror would await them in the streets and swamps of Bayou City.

Features:

• Pulp Funk Horror - Zombie cool, one of the most popular shooter classics injected with a whole new retro b-movie look.

• An utterly in-your-face zombie-dismembering blast - Non-stop light-gun style action on Wii, blow apart zombies for high-score thrills.

• Superb co-op action on Wii - Bring a friend and play the game as intended in your own buddy action movie as two of the meanest mofos in video gaming.

• Relentless, gore-drenched, over-the-top action - Only the coolest, most cold-hearted agent’s going to keep his head against the zombie flood. Use “Slow-Mofo Time” to make the perfect head-popping shot and “Evil Eye” to spot moments of opportunity that’ll send the whole environment up in flames.

• Wiimote reactions - Get knee-deep in the dead with motion-sensitive Wii-controls. Shuck a shotgun and when the zombies get too close, pistol whip jaws off or cave some heads in with the stock of your pump-action – all in stomach-churning close-up.

Check out the cool trailer too..

The sport of Samba has a rich and glorious history - so much so that it transcends most of modern and ancient history. For instance we know that amongst the tobacco and turkeys sent back by Sir Walter Raleigh was a case of native american maracas, and that Genghis Khan was a key inovator of the “eastern blade” style of play.

A key aspect of a Sambaist’s repetoir is their Pose technique; over the decades many varients have become popular and hence standardised amongst players, as such over the next few weeks we will be bringing to you some of the key poses that have shaped the global development of Samba.

Its decriers may say it isn’t a sport, that we are a bunch of liars and it is a video game. We say that they are the liars. LIARS. And that their pants are most likely on fire.

POSE #1: The Monkey

In comparison to many other pose techniques The Monkey is not a cut and dried pose and as a result has several variations all of which originated first depending upon who you believe.  The earliest recorded use of a monkey pose was in Qinghai province of China, close to the border with Sichuan and Tibet in approximately 126AD.

This variation shown, originated by spiritualist, artisan and musician Xi Lau-Fawn was a much looser pose than what is classed as “The Monkey” today.  This version as a result is known as “The Orang-utan” due to its loose, long limbed form. It is claimed that Lau-Fawn’s subsequent attainment of enlightenment was a result of practicing this pose for seven hours a day seven days a week for seventeen years.

Additional variants include controversial pose “The Gibbon”, but this in itself has several sub-classes. Use of the “Funky Gibbon” was outlawed in 1994 following claims of use of illegal Funk doping at the USAS Championships by then defending champion Darryl Grayson. The “Punky Gibbon” (aka the “Punky Monkey”) was also banned in public places by police for several years during the 1970s.

At every company I’ve worked at so far (that’s 3), there have been issues about making the tea. In my world, it’s every man for himself, so I’m happy to get my own. However, when people start offering me stuff, I’m naturally inclined to say yes. But I’m not always the best at making the tea for other people, and sometimes I totally forget to return the favour, which has led to frequent banter around the workplace. On the other hand, when I’m feeling particularly generous, and dish out the tea rounds almost every hour, I find that few people realise my actions and likewise don’t return the favour. Thus I find myself in tea making infinity.

Well, at SEGA, I have always been impressed on the quite ingenious methods presented in order to decide who will make the tea. At Old Street there’s enough space in the Community Team’s office to have a miniature putting course. When a tea round was declared, whoever wanted a cuppa would have to tee off, and the person with the lowest score (in golfing terms this means the person who takes the most shots) would go and make the tea. For the full rules on Tee for Tea, check out our Facebook group.

Now at Brentford we’ve got a problem of space. So, when I moved here I was at a loss as how tea rounds would be decided again (fearing the return to mutual tea making). Then Dave turned up a couple of weeks ago and insisted that we have now have a flash game competition to determine who would make the tea.

The search for the perfect flash Tee for Tea took us far and wide on the Internet, but while using Stumbleupon, I managed to come across a veritable gold mine of flash sports games that we began to use for the competition. It’s called Allonga.com, and if you like your flash games, then I advise you to check it out. We’ve found a few others too, such as the mysterious green helicopter game and the classic smack the penguin. Basically, whoever gets the lowest score at certain games within a time limit (this is to prevent refreshing and cheating) has to make the tea. If you’ve read this far, take a look through Allonga and tell us what you think your best tea making game would be - because we’re still not sure we’ve perfected the virtual Tee for Tea. At the moment we’re regular players of Island Cruising, and Mini Golf, but we haven’t been able to check them all out yet. I’ll be posting our personal bests for Tea for Tee as and when, and I’d like to know if anyone beats our records!

So another week goes by here at SEGA, and another fun activity seemed to come along. Having been here a mere six weeks, and managing to be treated to a two day conference within that time, I thought I was somewhat fortunate of my arrival date. Then, this week, one of our nice little agencies treated us to an evening of Go Karting in Esher.

We got an hour off work for the event (always a pleasure) and then headed over to Esher where the track of destiny was laid out.

Now before we get started properly, I need to tell you that Dave has recently moved to the Brentford office, bringing his tradition of competition to see who makes the tea round (this entails a mini golf competition ‘Tee for Tea’ in Old Street. I’ll tell you more about the complex methods as to how it is decided in another post, but let’s just say I didn’t have a great start to the week, and I was becoming worryingly good at making coffee after so much practice. With this in mind, I was out for revenge on the track, so after jumping into my overalls, gloves, hair net (er?) and helmet, I was delighted to see that I would be competing against my newly found nemesis.

Fifteen karts would be racing around the 800 metre track at the same time and they could reach about 60 km/ph on the straight. When you’re so low down, that seems dangerously fast, so it was sure to be a high octane race. I clearly wasn’t too hot on the practice laps, getting passed numerous occasions and landing my team well back in the grid to begin the race. (12th out of 15 I think). Fittingly, Dave’s team was in last. So, with motors at the ready, we revved off.

To say my driving remained questionable even after the practice lap would have been more than accurate. Almost every time I turned a corner when I was under pressure or chasing someone down, I’d spin out. After the first I was way down the field and out of reach of claiming the lead.

Fortunately, it seemed like a lot of other people also had a penchant for spinning out, so even though my driving was simply awful, I struggled back into a more respectable position. However, after skidding around the opening corner of the track four times in a row with a screeching brake, one of the marshals

had enough (and that after numerous occasions of being told to calm down) and I was sent to a sin bin for a thorough telling off. After about thirty seconds of lectures about my poor driving (I sold my car in February, so I insist I’m out of practice) I was back out on track.

Seeing as everyone was wearing a helmet, it wasn’t easy to see exactly who you were up against if you were chasing someone. However, I did notice Dave’s shoes at one point, and began to get on his tail. We must have gone around about four laps of high octane pace, trying to edge each other out, before I decided to risk it all on a seriously steep bend at max speed. Unfortunately, this ended in tears, with me spinning out and watching my adversary shoot off into the distance, while doing my best to prevent other racers passing me by generally getting in their way.

Well, after all the action, we even got a BBQ thrown into the mix, which was pretty amazing. Then we headed home. Living in Brixton, this took a while (sleep by 1am is about three hours passed bed time). So I took advantage of flexi hours in the morning and came in at ten. I’ll explain the tea making rules soon!

*Artist’s Impression

Ok - wasn’t quite expecting the flood of work that was coming my way towards the end of the week, but I got tied up with a secret project that will be coming very soon - stay tuned for that - it’ll be free for everyone to join.

Anyhow I promised a post on the team building exercise that we played out after the ‘exciting’ bit of our merry conference. Kev’s been able to give you some of the low down already in an earlier post on what chaos ensued, but I feel the need to let you know a little more about what fun activities happened at our conference.

Well, after much laughter in the Generation Game part of the speaking, and a quite delicious packed lunch, we headed off to a water park somewhere in the Cotswolds for all sorts of boating shenanigans.

I found myself in team two - the oranges - (there were six teams in all) so shortly after arriving my face was entirely covered with orange makeup; I’m not altogether sure where it came from. It just so happened that most staff from the European offices were all grouped together in the oranges. While they all spoke excellent English, things maybe weren’t altogether on the same wavelength when we capsized our Canadian canoe three times in a minute. We were promptly told to get out of the water and never attempt to set sail again.

So, after firmly losing the first task of rowing, kayaking and Canadian canoeing (shudder) to the purples we went on to battle at some kind of Chinese long boat rowing - (that’s Dragon boating right? Yes, Wikipedia says so.) Well, we got firmly thrashed at that too, and I was relishing the prospect of getting the biggest wooden spoon known to man.

After that we had to endure several trips across the lake to collect stuff to build our raft. Luckily it was scorching hot, so being ridiculously poor at oarmanship (apparently that’s a real word) was compensated by building a pretty sweet tan. Once we’d collected all our stuff we had to build a raft in twenty minutes, but at least seventeen of those were spent by most of the team milling around. In the dying seconds we somehow built a raft that looked completely terrible in comparison to those built by the other five teams. For some reason, I nominated myself as one of the six crew members to row this beast across a small stretch of water and back again. I was pretty certain we were going to sink.

Despite my certainty, we actually didn’t do too bad in this task - I think we came fourth, even beating our old enemies team purple in the process, and we didn’t sink! So, unfortunately, I couldn’t get my hands on the coveted wooden spoon. Oh well… Now for what conferences are really about…

I could go on for hours about shenanigans of the BBQ and beers that commenced at about 8 PM, but I don’t think many people would be too happy about me posting the finer details on the Internet - that’s what Facebook is for! Normally in photographic form of course. Well, there was many a delicious cocktail consumed, plenty of tasty BBQd meat and even a few arcade games dotted around - as well as the chance to shake it up on Samba de Amigo. Probably the highlight was the limbo - which seemed to go on for several hours, and the surf board - here’s a slightly Photoshop enhanced photo of Martin doing his tricks:

Ghoulish hey? Maybe it’s just my drunken skewed vision…

Martin insists that I mention that he stayed on the surf board the longest out of all those who tried. The thing is, I got cocky by whooping and hollering, and the attendent turned the speed up because of this. I still hold that if I hadn’t been cocky then I would have won. Needless to say, I felt terrible in the morning.