Zombie High [Genesis / MegaDrive – Cancelled]

Zombie High [Genesis / MegaDrive – Cancelled]

Zombie High is a cancelled side scrolling action game that was in development by Electronic Arts for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. An incomplete beta rom was somehow leaked online

It seems that there are a few enemies at the end of level 1 that cannot be defeated with your default slime weapon. They can be defeated by using the book as a weapon by entering the door marked number 4 next to the enemies and the book weapon will appear. It is very difficult to defeat them without being defeated yourself.

Celine was able to find some early screenshots in Joypad magazine #10, in which we can notice that the main character sprite has some differences from the one in the playable beta. It’s currently unknown why this game was canned and never released.

Recently a debug mode was found by “The Jackal” by pressing start and A on controller 2 simultaneously. Using this debug mode we can get to see more levels,Music that was never used(which after some research appears to be music used in a later EA title “Crue ball” composed by “Brian L Shmidt” Weapon select,invincibility and disabling enemies. It appears a lot of the game was finished but the only things missing are an ending to the game and most of the minigames and dialogue sections that can be found by entering certain doors in various levels will not work properly unless accessed using the debug modes level select feature

The main characters name in this game according to the debug menu is “Travis” He is also referred to as Travis by some of the characters in the classroom sections

There is a movie of the same name released in 1987, This game may have taken some inspiration from this movie despite not being a game based on this movie, One of the in game characters is called “Emerson” there is also a character in the movie named Emerson, which further confirms this suspicion

The end boss of the game is loosely based around the appearance of Allister Fiend from the band “Motley Crue” EA also licensed Crue Ball a year after this games cancellation and Allister Fiend also appears in this game. The only difference in Zombie High is that he is blue

Crue Ball shares many things in common with zombie high, such as similar graphics design, and similar sounding music (one identical song) The designers of Crue Ball are called NuFx Who could be the possible designers of Zombie High
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Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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monokoma




11 thoughts on “Zombie High [Genesis / MegaDrive – Cancelled]

  1. Gothrunner

    Hey guys, I hope somebody will read this. I checked out the source of the rom image existing in the web. There seems to be a lot more stuff inside the rom than we can see in the first level. Even big parts of dialogues which advance the story are within. Im not a hacker anyway but it would be great when someone who is competent could make the teachers at the end of the first level vulnerable or at least delete them. Perhaps we would be able to see more from the game. I`d really like to see another part of it. If someone has got an idea or a solution please contact me at my Youtube Acc.

    1. monokoma Post author

      Thanks a lot for the info Gothrunner! :) Sadly i dont know much about hacking roms neither, so we could just wait for someone more expert on the topic :P

  2. King Salmon Jr.

    I found this interesting interview with the creator of Ghoul School:

    http://www.bogleech.com/article-ghoulschool.html

    It seems some of the unused concepts described in that article seem very similar to play mechanics found in the ZH beta, e.g. items can be found in lockers, monsters sometimes attack from lockers, the janitor in the closet, among other things. Maybe it is all a big spooky coincidence =:o

    Also, there is a movie called Zombie High from the 80s, it has a character in it called Emerson, and in the ZH Beta there is a character with the same name. I haven’t watched the movie so I don’t know if there are any other connections.

  3. King Salmon Jr.

    I have searched through quite a few video game magazines from 92′ and 93′ without finding almost a hint of a mention about Zombie High. It seems EA were never confident about the game. I did manage to find the game listed in Sega \/isions #11 (p. 101) ‘Incoming!’ section, scheduled for February. The beta is dated late 92′ so by 93′ EA hadn’t completely given up on it, but my guess is they had Haunted in the pipeline as well and felt it was the better horror game of the two and released that instead.

  4. Nicholas

    I don’t know if it was ever distributed in the US, but here in the UK, certain EA games had a small booklet of upcoming games included with them, and one had several screenshots of Zombie High, showing gameplay, and the designs of several enemies and boss enemies. One of the boss enemies was a large face, attached to a wall, and the enemies were zombie bulldogs, and various undead students. I think I might still have a copy of the booklet around somewhere, so I’ll take a look for it, and scan the page if I find it.

  5. Nicholas

    Never found that booklet, but I won an EA game from eBay that has the booklet included! I’ll send scans in a week or two if it has the pictures!

  6. Maik Thiele

    The name they designed and made is Crüe Ball :)
    I digged arround the webseite of nufx but didnt find any infos. may after they bought by EA?

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