The Long History of Resident Evil

Ok so now RE5: AE has been announced and Halloween is around the corner i thought I'd release a little history lesson for all of you!

Part 1:

The story of Resident Evil starts back in 1989 when an RPG style horror game translated in English to “Sweet Home” swept the stores. The story was about a team of paranormal investigators where they get trapped inside the mansion by evil spirits.

Back in 1989 this was a shit scary and very hard game to complete. You had permanent character deaths unlike other RPGs which you could simply revive them during battle, traps, and 5 different endings.

As early as 1994 Resident Evil started Development as a concept for Nindendo’s CD based system: Originally a remake of “Sweet Home” Shinji Mikami was Inspired by George A Romero and decided to make changes to the game and make the “ghosts” into “zombies” and have an evil corporation behind the events of the mansion. Throughout this period Sony broke away from Nintendo and brought out the Playstation in 1995. Nintendo now had no new system, Capcom decided to side with Sony and begin to develop the game to suit the 32-bit CD based PlayStation.

Many changes through the concepts were considered, for example during its concept phase Barry was a cyborg with a robot arm, and at one point during the development in 1995 the game was to be a FPS. However it was quickly established that the game wouldn’t be as scary. Eventually settling on the pre-rendered route, which allowed amazing visuals for the time.

In 1996 Biohazard was finalised released in Japan, and when legal problems arose in America with the band "Biohazard" the game was given the title "Resident Evil" everywhere else.

Out of pne man’s dream to remake one of the scariest RPGs in 1994, came an idea that would put the genre of survival horror on the map just two years after conception.