Plants vs. Zombies At The NYC Halloween Parade; Goth Gaming Geeks Rejoice

Gaming Culture, Tower Defense — By Jeffrey L. Wilson on November 3, 2009 at 1:09 am

When one thinks of the city that I call home, typically the Yankees, Broadway, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Coney Island, and a dozen other landmarks and locales comes to mind, but the Big Apple also throws one heck of a Halloween party; absolutely killer if I were to draw from the well of fairly obvious puns.

If you were fortunate enough to be in the New York City this past October 31st, you would have witnessed several wild and wacky outfits that would’ve caused laughter, repulsion, and admiration (sometimes from the same get up)  as angels, demons, sexy police officers, and large men dressed as Little Bo Beep shimmied through the West Village. It was all par for the course, really.

What is unusual, however, is for a video game company to act as an in-parade sponsor, which is exactly what Popcap Games did with its Plants vs. Zombies troupe. Popcap Games assembled a motley crew of Halloween revelers (including myself and Examiner‘s Gracie Leach who chatted it up with  a Popcap Games rep as well as a member of the undead) that either donned the worker bee garb of the Temp Zombie, or the insanely cute visage of one of  the many in-game plants. And it was awesome.

Those that went zombie were given a deathly grey-green makeup, plastic rotting teeth, and a red tie to complete the ensemble (we had to show up with our own white shirt/blue pants/brown jacket combination), while those that went plant donned foam add-ons (and their own dark colored clothing) to represent flora. Our goal? To march through the streets of lower Manhattan to bring merriment to all, give out freebies, and recreate the gameplay in live action.

We were drenched by rainfall and thoroughly worn by the end of the night, but the collective group enjoyed hamming it up for the enthusiastic crowd. Check out the gallery below for more photos of Popcap Games’ Plants vs Zombie NYC Halloween Parade troupe!

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Tags: 2D, 2d games, 2d graphics, nyc halloween parade, plants vs. zombies, popcap, popcap games