Plants vs Zombies Unknown Facts

Plants vs Zombies is now available for Xbox Live in all of its hi-definition glory.  I was uncertain if I would enjoy it as much considering I played the heck out of it on my computer.  Two hours later, I realized it was even more fun on the big screen.  There is a bunch of new play modes and the mouseless gameplay translated better than I anticipated.  I even caved and bought the premium Plants vs Zombies theme package.

So now that PvZ is back in the news, I thought I'd share an article posted at OC Weekly that tells us about some little-known PvZ facts.

*  The game was originally planned to be called "Lawn of the Dead".  This was obviously a pun of the 1978 George Romero zombie film Dawn of the Dead. Due to legal reasons, the title had to be changed to the current Plants vs. Zombies.

*  Senior game designer, George Fan, had three game influences when desigining Plants vs Zombies:  Warcraft III, Insaniquarium, and Tapper.

*  Another inspiration for the gameplay mechanics of Plants vs Zombies comes from the movie Swiss Family Robinson.

*  The song "Loonboon" is inspired by composer Laura Shigihara's cat named Metroid.  The stages that use the song are chaotic, so she drew inspiration for the writing the song by watching her cat running around the house, jumping off walls, and playing with his toy mouse.

*  The development team wanted to use aliens as enemies of the game.  This was later changed to zombies because players are able to react more easily to the slow movement of zombies.

*  One of the enemies that had to be cut from the final version of the game is the zombie dog. 

*  The zombies' movement is based off of the The Finnish Disco: