It's time to protect your friends and family, because both Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol are out right now on Switch and Xbox One, and the reactions have been, well, a little mixed. Could it be that these classic top-down action games have lost their bite, or are the so-so reviews in line with what critics thought back in the day? To celebrate the recent release (and do my part for the neighborhood), I've decided to pour through classic issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Die Hard Game Fan, Super Play and GamePro to see what 1990s critics thought of both Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol back when they first came out. Look out for that giant baby, because today we're going to find out if these 16-bit greats deserve their status as bona fide cult classics.


Although it's never actually scary, Zombies Ate My Neighbors was a love letter to the cheesy, goofy and downright silly horror films of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and even the 80s. With references to Night of the Living Dead, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Friday the 13th, The Fly, Them and dozens of alien invasion movies where the UFO is clearly dangling by a very real string, this was a veritable who's who of the monster movie world. It was basically Cabin in the Woods twenty years before Cabin in the Woods came out.

As you can imagine, this killer premise was a big hit with pretty much every magazine and critic in the 1990s. If you watched my countdown of Electronic Gaming Monthly's Best & Worst Reviewed Games, then you'll already know that this Konami great ranked as EGM's sixth best game of 1993. It also won their Game of the Month prize in August, with Martin calling Zombies Ate My Neighbors "an instant favorite." Resident fake ninja Sushi-X raved that "this adds to the few horror games out there and really shows off the humor in horror movies. To top it off, there is a two-player mode along with great graphics and control."

EGM wasn't the only magazine to fall in love with those neighbor-eating zombies. Die Hard Game Fan's Tom Slick was quick to call it "one of the best two player games money can buy. It is so rare that you get this level of quality game design that it makes you really appreciate it when it does happen." His cohort, Sgt. Gamer, echoed those thoughts, calling it an "instant classic" that is a "must-buy."

In case you're wondering, Zombies Ate My Neighbors was also a big hit with critics across the pond. Super Play compared it to games like Smash TV and Operation Logic Bomb before giving it an 89%. "If you liked The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, then you'll appreciate this game. Even if you didn't, you'll still find an innovative shoot 'em up with lasting appeal." Fellow Brit mag SNES Force agreed, praising that that there's "never a moment that goes by without some horrific situation to comprehend with hardly any time to gain your composure. It's frantic, funny, comic horror at its best."

In reality, every critic who reviewed Zombies Ate My Neighbors in 1993 came away impressed. In fact, the lowest score I could find was over at Nintendo Power, who gave it a 4 out of 5. They liked the "great humor and fun graphics," but complained that "most of the zombies are pretty mindless and don't present a lot of challenge." Even if not every critic was ready to call it the game of the month, it's clear that there was a lot of love and admiration for Zombies Ate My Neighbors back in the day. This is certainly a cult classic for a reason.

Released almost exactly one year after Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Ghoul Patrol was not met with the same level of excitement. While not a complete misstep, it was painfully clear that everybody was a little disappointed by this follow-up.

Electronic Gaming Monthly didn't even bother to give it a proper column in the Review Crew. Instead what it got was this paragraph written by Mike Weigand, who may have called it a "worthy sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors" and a "great salute to old, late-night horror movies," but gave it a score that is a full point below the original. This is a franchise that went from being the Game of the Month and EGM's 6th Best-Reviewed Game of 1993 to little more than an afterthought in an issue that gave us full reviews of Ballz 3D, The Pagemaster and Brutal. Yeah, the animal fighting game.

Die Hard Game Fan was also disappointed in this follow-up, with Nick Rox giving it a big, fat "NO!" and concluding that "one time was the charm" for the Zombieverse. Why is this? Takahara explains it this way: "When the prequel to this game came out last year, it was one of the most talked about games at Game Fan. Now, a year later, JVC attempts to do nearly the same thing, without the original team." This little nugget of information, along with the bad gameplay, ended up haunting this sequel as it made the rounds at all of the classic magazines.

For what it's worth, Ghoul Patrol had plenty of fans. GamePro gave it a 4.5 out of 5 and called it a "worthy successor." "Good ghouls, good graphics, good fun. Ghoul Patrol is the closest you can get to the acclaimed Zombies Ate My Neighbors." Super Play also liked the game, giving it an 82% and concluding that it's "a gigantically entertaining, if small, silly-Gauntlet with impeccable presentation," but noted that it's a "slightly disappointing sequel."

Still, even if the critics felt a little letdown by this speedy follow-up, Ghoul Patrol still ranked higher than you might think. For example, EGM may have given it a lower average of 7.8 out of 10, but it was still the 4th best-reviewed action game of 1994, below only Mega Man X, Earthworm Jim and Castlevania: Bloodlines. Ghoul Patrol may not have been an "instant classic" like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but it was a fun game that received reasonably high scores at the time. I'll let you decide if it's a cult classic or not.