Corpse Killer 3DO

Corpse Killer: A Shot in the Dark?

Platform: 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
Developer: Digital Pictures
Publisher: Digital Pictures
Release: 1994

In an industry perpetually chasing the cutting edge, the 3DO was often  a proving ground for new, albeit sometimes misguided, technological pursuits. Digital Pictures, a studio synonymous with the nascent Full Motion Video (FMV) genre, released Corpse Killer in 1994, a light-gun shooter that attempted to fuse B-movie schlock with interactive entertainment. The results were, predictably, a mixed bag, offering fleeting moments of kitsch charm amidst a sea of technical shortcomings and repetitive gameplay.

Presentation: The Video’s the Star (Sort Of)

As with all Digital Pictures titles, Corpse Killer‘s main draw is its live-action video. Here, the premise involves a highly improbable tale of a US Marine, a vampy female journalist called Julie, and a Rastafarian sidekick called Winston. The journalist is there to expose a fiendish plot by the US military to create an army of undead. The pentagon were  using mad scientist Dr. Hellman to carry out the deed but he has now gone rogue on a remote tropical island. Its your job to stop him and his zombie army and save your army teammates from zombification.

The acting, as one might expect from direct-to-video horror, ranges from quite over the top funny to downright cringe. Vincent Schiavelli as Dr. Hellman provides some memorable moments, but the overall production feels less like a carefully crafted experience and instead plays out like a  collection of disparate film segments strung together.

On the 3DO, the video quality is… adequate. It’s an improvement over some of the grainy efforts on other CD-ROM systems like the Mega CD   but not better than the Saturn version (Graveyard edition). It’s definitely nothing approaching broadcast quality. The full-screen presentation, while laudable in its ambition, often highlights the inherent pixelation and compression artifacts. The zombies themselves, portrayed by actors in rubber masks, manage to convey a certain low-budget charm, but the effect is more goofy than genuinely terrifying. Zombie attackers seem to glide, twitch or jump towards you jiggling in snaking lines that don’t look very convincing.

Gameplay: A Shooting Gallery of Diminishing Returns

At its core, Corpse Killer is a rail shooter. Your gun sight navigates the screen, and your objective is simple: blast every zombie or other reanimated menace that appears. There’s a minimal narrative progression, pushing you through various jungle, graveyard, ship wrecked treasure beaches and compound areas, all rendered as pre-filmed sequences that always move left to right.

The problem, however, lies in the execution. Aiming with a standard gamepad can be a sluggish and inaccurate affair, and using a light gun does improve the playability and enjoyment for sure, but is still ultimately tedious.

I managed to configure this game to play with a Sinden Lightgun on the  Phoenix emulator and the aiming was actually very accurate  although after a while the whole thing becomes, as stated, very repetitive. Also frustratingly  there aren’t any pickups you can shoot to collect  powerups.

Sometimes you will get hit by cheap shots from zombies who pop into view with little warning and the grey/white enemies that change from grey to white very close to you, are annoying. If you kill them whilst they are grey you lose energy but they explode all other zombies if hit whilst white. The aiming demands quick reflexes but the limited variety of enemy types and attack patterns quickly leads to monotony. You’ll blast the same shuffling body popping  zombies and the same few special zombies with alarming regularity.

The strategic element of using poisoned  “Datura” bullets to revert certain fellow captured army operatives back to human form, is a neat idea, but lack of special bullets is an issue and requires you to replay certain areas to stock up .

Sound: The Groans and the Grooves

The audio presentation in Corpse Killer is similarly a mixed bag. The voice acting, while leaning heavily into the B-movie aesthetic, serves its purpose, delivering lines with exaggerated flair and occasional humour. The sound effects for zombie groans, gunshots, and the squelch of defeated undead are functional, if unremarkable.

The musical score attempts to evoke a sense of dread and urgency, but it often falls into repetitive loops that become tiresome rather than immersive. There are moments where the music aligns well with the on-screen action, but these are exceptions rather than the rule.

Longevity: A Brief Encounter

Even for those with a penchant for FMV titles, Corpse Killer‘s shelf life is surprisingly short. The novelty of the live-action sequences wears off quickly, replaced by the tedious repetition of its core gameplay loop. You can skip all FMV segments but once you’ve seen the limited array of shooting environments and experienced the unvaried enemy encounters, there’s little incentive to return. Completionists might slog through to see the utterly predictable conclusion of fighting against Hellman. This end boss fight is severly  lacking in creativity, as its  basically just a picture of Hellman’s  head spitting out masses of zombies. Casual players will likely abandon the island well before Dr. Hellman’s ultimate defeat and miss the gratutious FMV of bikini clad Julie on the beach/boat.

Conclusion

Corpse Killer on the 3DO is from a time when interactive U-Direct Tom Zito FMV games were seen as something exciting and cutting edge. They do hold a certain charm but in this case the actual shooting sections can become very repetitive. There is no need to watch out for innocent bystanders as the shooting galleries all follow the basic shoot everything concept. 

For those with a historical curiosity about the FMV era or a fascination with video game oddities, Corpse Killer might warrant a brief look. For everyone else, it’s a corpse probably best left buried as you are unlikely to dig it up for further replays once you mastered the basic premise.