The boss enemies aren't given a plausible excuse for behaving like crazed lunatics, they're just drawn that way. One assumes they happened to be shopping at the mall on Zombie Day, and the unimaginable strain of finding themselves seemingly alone against the teeming horde of undead unhinged whatever shred of sanity had been holding back their mania. The clown, with no more children left to entertain, turned mad and took to chainsaw juggling. The cop, with no more order to maintain, revealed her true, sadistic nature. The father and his sons, with expired hunting licenses, took to chasing larger game. It's also telling that so many of these characters are licensed to carry firearms. Japanese society abhors firearms, yet we embrace them and lawfully allow certain people to carry them in public places. Each of these people, it would seem, is represented in Dead Rising as a menace, capable of going mad at a moment's notice and turning their weapons - or ours - against us.
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"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." - Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski
The Dead Rising team reportedly visited a number of American shopping malls in order to perfect the virtual look and feel of that most American of edifices for their game. And in this regard the game succeeds magnificently. As has been reported here and elsewhere, the mall depicted in Dead Rising is spot-on, and the eerie accuracy of the displays and layout adds an extra dimension to the game's horror. The sound of Muzak blaring from a tinny speaker as one attempts to evade the assault of the undead is uncanny and strangely terrifying. One has to imagine though that Capcom's cultural investigators brought home far more than detailed architectural drawings and decorating plans. Perhaps they, on their own journeys, discovered their own fears.
It's important to reiterate here that the blame for the horror and carnage presented in Dead Rising lies entirely at the feet of America, whose scientists, attempting to feed its gluttonous people, caused the outbreak in the first place. Considering America is a global, scientific, military and consumer superpower rivaled by none, this blame is not entirely unwarranted, but what's remarkable here is that this isn't the first time Capcom has pointed its finger Westward. In the Resident Evil series (games arguably designed first and foremost for the Japanese audience), it was also an American concern, The Umbrella Corporation, which started the zombie fire, unleashing a plague that threatened to destroy mankind.
This fear of American creations threatening the survival of the human species harkens back to one of our previous cultural fears - that of nuclear devastation - which was more than a theoretical neurosis for the Japanese once upon a time, and perhaps remains a visceral concern to this day. To make matters worse, in Dead Rising it would seem we've once again encroached on lands belonging to indigenous people to practice our nefarious nematode niggling, this time ruining the lands of certain native Central Americans. The game's "antagonist," Carlito, is actually a freedom fighter working to expose the damage done to his homelands by the evildoing American Scientists. Thus, the circle is completed, American gluttony forces expansion and experimentation which leads to the destruction of a foreign civilization. Again.
