The Zombies vs. the Ambulance (also known as Zombie Virus in Europe) is a 2006 Horror game in that's Vol. 95 in a series of low budget Japanese PlayStation 2 games, the Simple 2000 Series, published by D3 Publisher.
The city in which the game is set gets hit by an earthquake and the sky turns black. As a medical student and his female colleague experience this quake, they realize that people have now turned into zombies. Facing a Zombie Apocalypse, the pair decide to use their hospital's ambulance to pick up any survivors and bring them back to hospital. Looks like it's every zombie versus the ambulance.
You spend the majority of the game in said ambulance, and one of the appeals of the game is bashing through scores of zombies in the city's streets. Upgrades are available, including ones for speed, as well as getting larger ambulances. When a survivor is picked up, it's necessary to get them back to the hospital as soon as possible, or else they'll eventually turn into a zombie. The only time you're outside the vehicle is when you're in the hospital garage, either interacting with any survivors there or checking out possible upgrades.
Tropes featured in this game include:
- Death by Ambulance: The game kind of zigzags this trope, as you do use the ambulance to run down zombies, but you can also rescue people who haven't quite passed over into un-death.
- Dual Boss: There's a boss battle against two guerrilla-like zombies.
- The End... Or Is It?: After defeating the caterpillar/moth-based creature for the final time, everything's back to normal; no sign of zombies or dark clouds. However, unknown to the protagonist or his female sidekick, a tiny part of the creature is seen crawling away, most likely leading to a repeat of events...
- The Jaywalking Dead: Running over zombies with your ambulance is literally one of the two main goals; the other is to locate and pick up survivors a la Crazy Taxi. If you're not moving fast enough, though, the zombies can climb on and start wrecking your vehicle instead.
- Loading Screen: The game's loading screen is of a zombie menacing shaking his head and hands towards the camera.
- Recurring Boss: Both the guerrilla zombie(s) and the caterpillar/moth creature. With the former, the first fight is with one, and the second fight has him with another grunt zombie; with the latter, it returns in different forms.
- The Unreveal: We never find out the origin of the mysterious creature that caused the game's events.
