Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first few minutes of The Tempura of the Dead are hard to forget. You are running through side-scrolling zombie stages as President Tompson and Samurai Sugimoto, severing heads and batting them back into the air to build a combo. It is a gleefully ridiculous hook, but it is not just a gag: keeping a head aloft improves your fighting ability and score, so every defeated zombie becomes an opportunity to press your luck.

That pressure gives the action a nice edge. Killing zombies is easy enough; sustaining a juggle while new enemies crowd the stage is where you have to stay alert. Drop a head and the counter resets, which makes failure immediate and understandable. It can also sting when you have built momentum only to lose it amid the chaos, but that tension is the point. The game wants you to treat every fight as a small performance, not a simple march toward the exit.

Switching between the two leads keeps the stages from becoming one-note. Tompson brings long-range machine-gun fire and can pick up extra weapons, while Sugimoto has the stronger sword and a higher jump. You can swap at any time, and the stages ask you to use those differences both for movement and for dealing with particular enemies. The result is a straightforward action game with just enough character management to make you think before charging ahead.

Progress depends on destroying every larger Germ in a stage, while smaller zombies respawn. That objective gives each area a clear finish line, but it also means you cannot always simply rush through. If you enjoy old-school games that make you clean out a level and wring points from enemy encounters, that structure will feel purposeful. If repeated lesser enemies already wear on you, the respawns may test your patience.

Graphics

The retro-style side view suits the arcade-like rhythm. The action is built around readable moments—zombies closing in, heads flying upward, and the two heroes occupying very different combat ranges—so the screen has to support quick decisions during a combo. The bizarre president-and-samurai pairing gives the game a knowingly cartoonish flavor.

Story

The story is a knowingly absurd excuse to get the action moving: the United States is overrun with zombies, President Tompson spots Samurai Sugimoto fighting from his helicopter, and immediately joins him. It is a premise that understands how silly it is and benefits from committing fully to the bit.

The explanation for saving the world is even stranger. The zombies must be cleansed of sin, which apparently means decapitation, aerial juggling, and tempura. That joke directly feeds the combat rather than sitting in an intro and disappearing, so the game’s central scoring obsession feels appropriately unhinged.

Do not come in expecting a weighty post-apocalyptic tale. The president and samurai are defined first by their roles in play—guns and range versus sword and mobility—and the story works best as a colorful frame for that contrast. Its charm comes from how earnestly it treats an intentionally foolish idea.

Overall Experience

The Tempura of the Dead is at its best when you stop playing cautiously and start chasing one more hit on a flying zombie head. The basic shooting and slashing would be serviceable on their own, but the combo chase gives the game its identity and makes room-clearing feel more active than routine.

The character swap is the other reason to stick with it. Tompson and Sugimoto are not interchangeable skins: their ranges, weapons, and jumps give you a practical reason to switch, and the stages lean on that distinction. With more than twenty world-map stages, there is a respectable amount of ground for that two-character setup to cover.

Frustration is likely to come from the same place as the fun. Respawning zombies and a reset combo counter mean mistakes can leave you redoing work just when you felt in control. Still, the payoff is a compact, oddball action game that asks for aggression, timing, and a willingness to embrace its nonsense. Give it a chance if you like retro side-scrollers with score-chasing instincts and a premise far stranger than their mechanics usually allow.

Retro Replay Score

6.8/10