The Zombie vs ambulance
■ publisher: vingt-et-un systems ■ Year: 2006
Though a common theme among the Simple series is the mockbuster, offering a lower-budget rip-off of a popular game, sometimes you get games that twist that idea a little bit. The Zombie Vs Ambulance, though mechanically similar to Sega’s Crazy Taxi, doesn’t try to look or feel like those games in the slightest. Instead, it relies on the outrageousness of its title and concept to sell it. The concept is pretty simple: the city is overrun with zombies, and you play as a paramedic driving around and looking for survivors to fetch back to the safety of the hospital. Survivors have a big glowing circle around them (like in Crazy Taxi), and come in various types, all offering something in return for their rescue. For example, soldiers and police officers help protect the hospital while you’re gone, and mechanics can develop new parts for your ambulance. For some reason, though, the time it takes for the mechanics to develop these parts is dependent on how many zombies you run over while you’re out. Maybe being a mechanic is seen as a bloodthirsty and vengeful profession in Japan? We don’t know. The only big flaw is that it’s a pretty long game, and the maps you drive around aren’t that big, so you’ll be seeing the same old streets over and over again. There’s a few boss fights, too, which aren’t particularly fun, but they’re only a tiny part of the game. The Zombie Vs Ambulance is one of a few Simple 2000 games that released in the west, renamed generically as ‘Zombie Virus’, but the prices it fetches online are a bit more than the game’s worth in our opinion. If you see it cheap at a car boot sale, though, that’s a different story.