In an interview with Kombo, PopCap's senior director of public relations Garth Chouteau talks about migrating the company's more popular games to other platforms, and PC title Plants VS Zombies, which Luke absolutely adored, certainly seems to fit the bill.

Peggle for XBLA is a good example of a game that we took that was popular on the PC and we spent probably twice as long as anyone else would have figuring how to make that game really good for Xbox and Xbox Live Arcade, and I think you will see that with Plants Vs. Zombies—I don't know the exact order in which that game will make its way onto other platforms, but it's certainly been successful enough, quickly enough, that we're looking at other platforms and deciding where we'll take that game next...

Garth didn't elaborate on where the plant on zombie action would go next, but it's the kind of game that would fit well no matter what size of gaming platform you try to cram it on.

PopCap Games' Garth Chouteau Confirms Plants vs. Zombies to Other Platforms and Future Wii Support [Kombo]

Plants vs Zombies is to tower defence what Nintendo's Advance Wars is to turn-based strategy: a game stripped of everything but the raw tactical essentials, then pumped so full of charm and neat little touches that hours, days, even weeks of your life may just be lost to it.

Loved
Simple Works Best – Plants vs Zombies appears simple, even simpler than many other tower defence games. You lay plants out across a small grid to stop the advancing zombies. Who, generally, only come at you from the one direction. But the map's basic layout belies the game's deeper complexity, with the number of enemies you face and ridiculous number of plants at your disposal making every level a deeply strategic affair.

Play It Again, Zombie – The game has a "campaign", where you move around the outside of your house battling the undead. While playing, you think it's the main event, but really, it's just a tutorial for the game's other modes: mini-games, puzzle and survival, which include things like a Horde mode, games where you play as the zombies and even a Harvest Moon-style garden, where you water your plants and...play music for them.

Oozes Charm, Not Brains – Most tower defence games are, to be kind, bland. Cheap visuals, dud designs, a legacy of their Flash game heritage. But PvZ is gorgeous, each zombie full of character, each plant a wildly unique botanical weapon. And I advise everyone to stick around for the pop song conclusion to the game.

Sure, at first glance, Plants vs Zombies looks like just another [name your favourite tower defence game]. But PvZ's beauty lies in the fact that it is just another tower defence game: the perfect tower defence game, balancing boundless strategy and frantic mouse-clicking better than any other title in the genre, while keeping a smile on your face the whole time through.

Plants vs Zombies was developed and published by PopCap Games, for the PC & Mac. Retails for $20. Played Adventure, Mini-Game, Puzzle and Survival mode to completion (barring "endless" levels).

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The game itself is tower defense strategy. Only instead of a tower, you've got a lawn to seed with plants that shoot, plants that explode and some plants that are just there to slow zombies down. To power your plant army, you need to collect sun and the only to up sun production is by planting sunflowers. The game ramps up steadily in difficulty, throwing more zombies at you with better defenses (traffic cone helmets, screen door shields, etc.).

But the real cute comes from these music videos, scored and sung by Laura Shigihara.

She explains the videos on her blog as a creative impulse:

…about two months ago, after finishing all the in-game music and SFX, I decided that I wanted to make a funny theme song… I thought it would be awesome if the song was basically a dialogue between the Sunflower (the plant I'm holding in this picture) and the Zombies.

She got her dad to the zombies' voices in the Japanese version, which makes it even more cute. Check ‘em out right here and be sure to give the game a go if you've got the time.

[Thanks for the tip, Manfriend!]