Feature: UK Dead Rising Launch Party

By Lesley Smith

September means one thing for gamers after the August lull: new launches in the run-up to Christmas and for journalists, it means lots of PR events. One of the most anticipated was Capcom's Dead Rising when a hoard of flesh-eating zombies invaded London to celebrate the launch, games and, of course, brains.

I've been following Dead Rising ever since I got the chance to play on a preview build back in July. In fact it's the game - with a weird combination of horror, suspense and comedy - that made me go out and buy a 360. After making a point of getting to know Capcom's PR team, I received my pre-invitation several weeks before the launch but September confirmed the event in a London club on the evening of the 7th, the day before Dead Rising was released in the UK. While a part of me yearned for news that Dead Rising would be launched in some massive American-style mall out of ours, the news that it was taking place in central London at the Eve Club made it much easier to get to.

So, armed with a fellow journalist to use as a human shield for the evening, we headed to the club, just off Regent Street, and were instantly spotted by zombies. The three female zombies salivated over us while we were IDed and checked off the guest list by the very living bouncers. The walking undead populated the club dressed in Capcom's snazzy promotional "I Heart Zombies & Shopping" T shirts offering drinks and bowls of chips.

Despite arriving fifteen minutes after the official start time, the club was heaving with journalists, PR folk, industry people and the odd member of the gaming public. Although most of the people there - including me - had received a promo copy of Dead Rising a few days before, two Xbox 360 pods had been set up in order to remind people why they were there. It's a sad fact that many games journalists are more interested in the free bar than in the game being launched.

I spent a good twenty minutes watching Capcom's very own Yamada Daisuke-san (known affectionately as 'Mr Y'), head of the company's mobile division, as he cut through swathes of the undead using nothing more than a wooden garden bench. He certainly seemed to be enjoying himself and soon had a posse of humans - and the odd zombie - huddled round the pod.

As well as the pods and the ever-present zombies, Capcom had made sure there were plenty of disposable Dead Rising cameras lying around so we could immortalise the evening. The zombies were strutting their stuff on the small dance floor, posing for numerous photographs or just sneaking up on people and leering over their shoulders, menacingly. We stumbled across the source of the outbreak by chance: the ladies toilets. Where the male organiser was busy touching up flesh wounds, bruises and bloody handprints on ripped T shirts. Moments later he was asking if we'd like a slit wrist or flesh wound. I've never fled so fast in my life.

We ended up chatting - as much as that is possible in a club where you can't hear a thing above incredibly loud music - with one of the younger male zombies who let us in on the hightlight of the evening: The special zombie dance routine.

After a brief announcement, the hoard congregated on the dance floor and Michael Jackson's Thriller began to play. It had to be the most surreal sights of the evening and was actually quite impressive, despite only lasting a few minutes. The gyrating zombies raised a stir and soon most of the people where congregating around the tiny dance floor. Being short has its advantages and I managed to sneak to the front and capture the whole thing.

Unfortunately, that was basically where the evening ended. Still - as my first launch event - it was really fun and the note of kitsch provided by the marauding members of the undead gave the evening a light-hearted note.