My gaming days started on the Atari 2600, so I’ve been through most of the videogame era, save for the paleolithic Pong days.  I enjoy playing the oldies, and modern games made in the old style (done right, of course) still find their ways into my consoles.

While role playing games are not a main part of my gaming diet, I will occasionally indulge when I have the time.  My favorite series is Dragon Quest, mainly because the plot and gameplay have remained basically the same: Evil Dude is trying to end the world, you and your merry band of adventures have to find him and take him out.

RPG’s, particulary the Japanese ones, have their own set of odd tropes and cliches (many documented here).  The majority of them feature the ability to resurrect player characters that have kicked the bucket along your travels.  It makes sense, because it would suck to spend a boatload of time building up a character only to have them killed off halfway and then have to start over again with a new one.

In any event, I was playing Dragon Quest VII, and inevitably, a character perished in battle.  At that point, “high-tail it to the nearest town” became the top item on my “To Do” list.  As I fled from each battle, hoping that I wouldn’t crap out of one of the many virtual twenty-sided die throws, I saw that a casket had taken the place of the recently deceased.  I figured we were dragging around his remnants so that there would be something TO resurrect once we got to town.  I imagined that lugging a casket around must be a pain; the weight, the smell, and innkeepers probably would charge extra for that sort of thing…”That’ll be an extra 10 gold coins for the corpse, Mac.”

At that point, I had a great idea:  wouldn’t it be great if we could bring that character back as a ZOMBIE?  I don’t know if it has been done before, but I think it would be cool.  To compensate, the character would be a stat hit, maybe less experience could be gained, and spells probably would be out of the question.  I figure half a character is better than none, especially when you’ve got four Evil Knights staring you in the face.  Maybe they could even have special zombie attacks, and once you get into town to see the priest/wizard/alchemist they can un-zombify the character for half off!

Zombies are like bacon, the number five, and The 1812 Overture: they just make everything better!  I think it could work!