Zombies have been routed in literature since the 16th century. They have appeared in films since the mid 1900s and have been in video games since the 70's. But it wasn't until the first Resident Evil game appeared on the original Play Station that defined the genre within the gaming industry. So much so, the franchise has spawned 25 games, several spin off games, manga movies, 7 Hollywood movies, comic books, and several animated movies too.
So with Halloween right round the Corner, to kick off this new series of Gaming top 5 posts, I found a few facts about one of the best Survival Horror games in recent history.
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1 – Sweet Home knock off;- It is a well known fact that quite a few things recently, from films to games, are remakes based on original work by someone else. 1996's Resident Evil was no different. Sweet Home Released in 1989 in Japan was based in a mansion, where you had to find clues and solve puzzles to progress in the game, the mansion was filled with zombies you had to fight, oh yeah, Sweet Home had door opening loading pages... sound familiar? Resident Evil was supposed to be a modern version of Sweet Home, but ended up as Resident Evil instead. Fortunately Both titles are owned by Capcom.
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2 – Residents May Cry;- Resident evil took years to develop as it tried a new over shoulder 3rd person approach which paid off. However the game was supposed to be more gun/action based, but the developers decided for a more ''close quarters'' type playability. So the character and AI mechanics were recreated from scratch. Because Capcom doesn't through away anything. The original coding for resident evil 4 game was re purposed and soon after, Devil May Cry Released, and that spawned a whole new franchise for Capcom in the process. Win, win.
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3 – The Godfather;- When Resident Evil 2 was due to come out, Capcom had a brilliant brainwave. Instead of showing in game footage, they wanted a live action add that mimicked what happens in the game. To do this, they called on the Zombie film Godfather himself, George A Romero, to direct it. Capcom were so impressed by the TV ad that they approached him again to direct the first Hollywood Resident Evil film. But upon reading the screen play Romero wrote, he was gently dropped and replaced.
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4 – Record Breaker;-As much as we all enjoyed the first 96 game when it came out, there was one thing that it sucked at, I mean really, sucked at. The dialogue / Voice acting in the game was so bad, it earned itself a Guinness World Record for ''The Worst Video Game Dialogue''. Yup. It was that bad. But thankfully, thanks to the HD release of the game, the Voice acting was replaced and is very good. Unless you download a mod that replaces it with that of the original.
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5 – Lets go Shooting;- When the developer team were brainstorming and started work on Resident Evil in 1994, the original idea of the game would have taken it down a different path. 3D first person Shooters in the Early 90's were hugely popular and the Dev team wanted to capitalize on it. However after some initial testing, they thought the game was boring and decided for a ''security camera'' style of gameplay as it added suspense to the overall feel of the game. And they were right.
Today you can download a mod for the PC version so you can play it in first person.
Bonus fact. Resident evil was gonna use ghosts instead of Zombies.
The movies still keep coming and so do the games, and with the recent release of resident evil 7 just keeps Capcom Firmly at the top of the list when it comes to Horror survival.
Thanks for reading.
Stu @TechMojo