Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES): passwords for every level

Zombies Ate My Neighbors has 55 levels. Fifty-five. Packed with vampires, werewolves, killer dolls, martians and a giant baby that walks through the screen demolishing everything in it. Finishing in one sitting is physically possible and humanly unlikely — which is why the password was part of the game, not a shortcut around it.

But there is a trap here that almost no list explains, and it causes 90% of the “this code doesn’t work” complaints.

Why password lists contradict each other

Zombies passwords are not fixed per level. They also encode how many victims you rescued along the way. In other words: the same level has more than one valid code, depending on the state the game was saved in.

That is why you find GYLM labelled “level 9” on one site, “level 24” on another and “level 25 with 10 victims” on a third. None of them is exactly lying — they are describing different states of the same system.

The practical effect: if a code drops you on a different level than advertised, it is not broken. Try the variant in the second table.

Main passwords by level

Variants that also work

These appear in community lists with a different victim count. If the password above does not land where you expect, yours is here:

Special codes

⚠️ Watch out for XWJR. It shows up in several lists labelled as an advanced stage — but it jumps straight to the credits and ends your run. If you typed it by mistake expecting level 21, now you know what happened.

The game censorship tried to tame

Developed by LucasArts and published by Konami in 1993, Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a love letter to B-movie horror — and every level is a visual joke about one of them. Fish and Crypts, Dances with Werewolves, Look Who’s Shopping: the titles alone carry the gag.

The SNES version took censorship edits that the Genesis version also received: red blood became purple, and the chainsaws in I Was a Chainsaw Maniac were redrawn. None of that removed the essential thing, which is the genuine panic of watching your neighbours get eaten while you hunt for the right key with seven seconds on the clock.

The core mechanic is cruel and brilliant at once: you do not need to kill the monsters, you need to save the victims. Lose them all and the level ends immediately. The whole game is a race against the clock disguised as a run-and-gun — and that is exactly why the victim count ended up inside the password.

One practical note before you type

Zombies passwords save your level and victims, but they do not save your arsenal. You come back with the basics. There is no point jumping straight to level 45 expecting a full bazooka — you arrive with a water pistol and a ten-foot monster in front of you.

Sources checked: passwords verified against the World of Nintendo archive and cross-referenced with AlmarsGuides and SuperCheats. The disagreements between lists are documented above rather than hidden — they are what actually explains the system.

Kept a password notebook? See also the complete Super Bomberman 3 passwords and the Goof Troop passwords, another SNES Capcom game where the code is made of pictures instead of letters.