Dead Rising 2 may feature 6,000 zombies on one screen?

Dead Rising 2, the much-anticipated multi-platform video game, may offer the opportunity to mow through up to 6,000 on-screen zombies at a time, says Laura Scholl, product manager for Mental Mill.

Mental Mill's software is enabling the developers of Dead Rising 2 to render an enormous number of characters on screen without losing the quality of the graphics, meaning that characters won't need to be repetitiously cloned wearing the same outfits. But will there really be 6,000 zombies on screen at a time during actual gameplay?

If what Izmeth Sideek said during a presentation for the game is true, then we can believe that this number might be close. According to MTV, Sideek said, "Dead Rising 2 deal[s] with the rendering of the greatest number of characters ever seen in a video game. Everything else needed to be subordinated to this requirement."

News of a cooperative gameplay mode, which would call for massive hordes of zombies to keep things interesting, may give credence to these statements. However, no official statement has currently been made regarding an actual number.