Single-segment speed run of Zombies Ate My Neihbors which rescues all possible victims done on October 31 2005. I did a speed run of a "horror" game on Halloween night! How cool is that? :)
The goal of this run was to rescue EVERY possible victim in the game, including the bonus levels. There's already a nice "100%" run on this site, but that one allows for victims to die, so long as all 10 are alive after the last stage.
Here's the victim breakdown:
480 â 48 normal levels
60 â 6 bonus levels
10 â the "Credits" level
3 â Defeating the "Titanic Toddlers" turns them into normal victims
MINUS 1 â Impossible victim behind a solid wall on Level 22B ("Son of Dr. Tongue")
TOTAL: 552
As shown above, it's NOT QUITE possible to get every single victim, so some may think that this isn't a "true" 100% run. However, since that one victim is absolutely impossible, I don't think that it counts. Call it a 99.8% run if you have to (552/553), but this is as good as it gets!
The first problem in doing this run comes right away in Level 1. There's a bonus stage pickup behind a cracked wall and the only way to get the necessary weapon is to be lucky. After about two hours of retries, I was able to get a Monster Potion as a random item from one of the cupboards. Worse yet, this bonus stage ("Day of the Tentacle") is easy to lose victims on. The pattern I used helps a lot with their survival, but you can still be unlucky and have something bad appear right on top of someone.
After this initial challenge, it gets a lot easier. Wherever possible, I used a calculated pattern of movements to "force" monsters to appear at a safe distance away from the victims.
I also had to take care to collect a bunch of items, but I did my best not to waste too much time doing this. One thing I was able to completely avoid was the cupboards/trash cans with the random items. A TAS person might try abusing those to perfect this run, but for a human, there's no way this can be useful. Anyway, there are enough items out there in plain sight not to worry about this.
Unfortunately, on some levels, the only sure strategy for perfection is the "boring" way. I sometimes stand around for a bit so I can make a bunch of monsters follow me around. The game can only spawn so many enemies at a time, so this keeps them from appearing on top of the victims. There are some places that the probability of this is simply too high to risk playing it "straight", particularly since it takes so much effort to get a run started. I try to keep this tactic down to a minimum, but bear with me when you see it.
Enjoy! :)
