Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie Hunt

*Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie Hunt* is a PC fangame of the Nintendo DS game *Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ*. The latter was the game that got Tangent into the DS. Later, *Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie Hunt (Atari 2600 version)* was made (with a few gameplay improvements and other changes), marking the start of the "authentic" Atari consoles miniseries. These games have introduced a number of firsts in Tangent's games.

## Breakthroughs

The original *Zombie Hunt* marked the beginning of the post-Vista era and was the first non-board game program (discounting a timer program) made by Tangent that was able to run on Windows 8 without crashing. Due to the way Windows 8 handles sounds, games made with Game Maker 8.1 or below crashes when too many sounds are playing at once or in succession. For a while, after acquiring a Windows 8 laptop, Tangent focused only on making board game tools, as Game Maker games with sounds were usually unplayable. One of *Zombie Hunt's* innovations is that sounds that played in succession played instead as a loop, which caused no problems with Windows 8. Otherwise sounds were made in the game such that no more than 2 sounds would be playing at the same time. This technique was adopted in the early post-Vista era *Touhou 2600* games, before it was dropped after Tangent's laptop was upgraded to Windows 10.

The 2600 version of the game was the first of Tangent's games to feature difficulty options, which is partially a remnant of the 2 modes present in the original *Zombie Hunt*, the other reason being Tangent feeling like their Atari 2600-styled game had to include some game options. In the original *Zombie Hunt*, there were 2 modes, one where players fired straight up (Classic Mode), and another where players used the cursor to aim their fire (Advanced Mode) similar to how in the DS game, players could aim their fire freely. However the new freedom made the mode a bit too easy in comparison to the Classic Mode, therefore the difficulty was increased. In the 2600 version, the Advanced Mode was absent, but the difficulty elements from that mode are incorporated into the advanced left difficulty setting.

Arguably, Haunted House (a Vista era game) allowed the player to set different levels of play, and that may be considered an early example of difficulty options. Furthermore, in the earlier *Nim Matches*, the player is able to adjust the level of the A.I.

Additionally, this game reintroduces regular enemies alongside bosses, which is something that had disappeared from Tangent's main games, the *Touhou 2600* series, since the *Super Ace* series, which was based on the *1942* series. In *Super Ace* games, regular enemies in every stage behaved the same. In *Zombie Hunt*, regular enemies became more dangerous with increasing levels.

## Gameplay

*Zombie Hunt* is a shoot 'em up, with the 2600 version and the Classic Mode being vertical shooters, while in the Advanced Mode, players could aim their shots.

Players may move their character left and right and fire. They are equipped also with a bomb, which burns all zombies and removes all bullets and zombie hands currently on the screen. On the left side of the screen is a progress tracker showing how close the player is to the level boss, while the boss' health is displayed at the top during a boss battle. There are 3 levels.

There are some gameplay differences between the original *Zombie Hunt* and the 2600 version:

* In the original, there are 2 game modes (but otherwise no difficulty settings), while in the 2600 version, there is a total of 4 difficulty setting combinations (but otherwise no modes to choose from).
* In the original, the player receives no invulnerability for hitting a zombie. This was added in the 2600 version.
* In the original, firing was automatic. In the 2600 version, it was done by holding down space.
* Momotaro was added as a playable character in the 2600 version.
* The final boss is changed.
* In the original, players had unlimited continues. Using a continue restarts the current level at 5 lives (as opposed to the 7 granted at game start). This is not present in the 2600 version.
* In the original, players beat the game by beating the third boss. There is no scoring. In the 2600 version, the game is score-based and beating the third boss loops the game back to the first level with increased difficulty.

Aesthetic differences are stated in the article 2600.

## Trivia

* An Atari 2600 version of the game was first seen in the original version of *Zombie Hunt* as the game demo.
* *Zombie Hunt,* both versions, are two of the few games Tangent has made that feature demo screens.
* The final boss of the 2600 version is the 3rd Little Pig, housed inside a metal machine.
* The Atari 2600 version features an Atari-styled "seizure screen" for a short period after a boss is defeated.
* The Cheshire Cat, after being broken up into 3 parts, often hovers around the player rather than collide with them. This was actually the result of a bug, but one that Tangent thought was interesting enough to retain.
* Flickering in the Atari 2600 version was sometimes only triggered by certain events and are sometimes made to flicker between 2 overlapping objects, to add a degree of realism to the flickering.
* *Zombie Hunt* was inspired by the Tinkernut World"How to Make an Atari Game" tutorial, which featured a game Tangent remade on PC before *Zombie Hunt*.
* It was originally planned to have the Atari switches as a banner under the main game screen. This was later abandoned from difficulty in having to change the values of variables to accommodate for the change.
* Checks to make sure the player must have a way out of certain boss attacks have been removed in the right difficulty A setting, so it's potentially possible that the player has no choice but to get hit at times.
* Momotaro shows up in the title screen of the original *Zombie Hunt*, but is not a playable character there.
* The flashing parts of the regular zombies and Gretel are meant to represent their mouths, with Gretel's teeth being blood-covered.
* The way that the player bullet doesn't reorientate itself while being fired horizontally in the Atari 2600 version is a reference to *Yars' Revenge*.
* The "blood explosion" sprite that appears when zombies are killed is the same sprite but recoloured as the "boss defeated" sprite in early Touhou 2600 games.
* The different background colours in different levels are a reference to Atari games such as Missile Command and Centipede, whose colour palettes change when you level up.
* If the player sets the TV Type switch to B-W, they can turn on the "rotating colour palette" Atari screensaver, which existed in early Atari 2600 games to prevent screen burning. An example of the screensaver can be seen here (Youtube).
* The zombie arms that come out of holes in the ground have been mistaken for cacti.

## See also

* Gretel Attack - one of the second boss' attacks
* New Classic Danmaku Pattern - one of the other attacks in the game

## External Links

* Full gameplay (original) - Youtube
* Gameplay (2600 version; Difficulty AB) - Youtube
* Zombie Hunt game page - Tumblr
* 2600 version game page - Tumblr