Dead Rising 2 will increase the number of on-screen zombies in the original Dead Rising by a massive 6,500

During the first in-game demonstration of Dead Rising 2 in Monte Carlo last week, developer Blue Castle showed off new technology that enables it to power 7,000 rendered characters, the largest number ever seen in a game.

“With Dead Rising 1 the main idea at Capcom time was that up until that point we had only the Resident Evil series that had 20-30 zombies on screen, so we wanted to throw in as many zombies as possible,” said Capcom's head of R&D Keiji Inafune during the Dead Rising 2 presentation.

“With Dead Rising 1 we got 500 zombies, but with DR2 we have 7,000, so we could have done much better the first time.”

While Inafune admits that more zombies won’t necessarily make for a better game, he does say it will broaden the scope of activities open to the player.

“It's not just if you throw more and more zombies into the game it is going to make the game better, but it does open up many opportunities,” he said.

“For example, in Tokyo subway it gets very crowded with many people. Imagine getting onto a bike in Tokyo subway with two chainsaws attached to it and cutting through all those people, it's just something that feels really damn good!”

Remind us never to approach Keiji Inafune in a crowded Tokyo subway.

Check out our preview for all the gory details on Dead Rising 2.