During the Creator Talk Battle at the Nintendo GameCube event in Shibuya February 16, I had a chance to see the newest video footage from the upcoming release of Biohazard, a.k.a. Resident Evil. However, I also had a rare chance to watch the producer Mr. Hiroyuki Kobayashi himself play through bits of the latest build. In truth, Mr. Kobayashi forgot the save files he wanted to show in Osaka, but the data he brought was impressive enough. Believe me, the results were extremely convincing.

Mr. Kobayashi demonstrated two boss battles, the first of which took place in a sewer-like water tank area in which several very large sharks lurked. The water and lighting effects were incredible, and worked very well together to give a real sense of depth and feeling to the waterways and surrounding environment. The sharks were superbly animated, and struck lightning fast. Mr. Kobayashi took a few shots at them before handing the controller off to another Talk Battle participant, the creator of Animal Leader, Gento Matsumoto.

The particle effects from the wounds looked very nice, with blood splatters first bursting strongly from the sharks’ bodies and then dissolving into and tainting the surrounding water. Also, the water splashes when the sharks attacked or thrashed from being shot were very effective, at times being flung directly into the camera. This also gave an excellent feeling of depth in an otherwise confined area.

There was brief lull as Mr. Kobayashi explained that the boss shark would soon appear. No sooner had he said it, a very, very large and beautifully textured shark emerged, first as an outline swimming deep in the water before bursting out and striking dead Jill dead.

The second demonstration Mr. Kobayashi showed was a battle against a plant boss, using the grenade launcher. This rather large boss occupied most of the room that it guarded, hanging from the ceiling and unfolding downwards as it prepared to attack. In this battle, because you start on the ground floor you must ascend a staircase and do battle with the plant-thing from a balcony facing it.

Although it was simply constructed, having only a main body and various appendages, the plant boss was incredibly textured. Its main body took on damage as Mr. Kobayashi pumped round after round of grenade launcher shells into it, accompanied by gruesome squishy, splattering sounds. However, it didn’t seem to be a very complex battle, as the plant-thing’s attacks mostly consisted of flailing tentacle-vines. While uncomplicated, it didn’t appear to be an easy fight however. Before passing the controller to the other Talk Battle participants, Mr. Kobayashi emptied all of his grenade rounds into the beast, and the others continued blazing away.

During the demonstration, Mr. Kobayashi commented on the game’s content, saying “Play it with the lights on.” While I disagree and think that this a game for pitch black living rooms and cranked stereos, I understand what he meant. Resident Evil just looks DAMN scary. Anyone who has seen the screens will agree, but having seen this game in action, I tell you that when that giant shark suddenly leapt from out of the dark sewer, there were a number of audible gasps.

I also noticed a few things of interest. It seems that the GameCube incarnation of Resident Evil will feature the same area-to-area ‘door’ transitions as its Playstation predecessor. The demonstration showed the same door-opening and ladder-climbing transition sequences that were necessary to mask the load times in the older versions of Resident Evil. Each transition lasted just over six seconds.

Also, the title screen and pause screen menus are in English, as is the voice acting. The remaining text, such as item descriptions and in-game text (the results of searching an area or trying to open a locked door, for example), is in Japanese.

Stay tuned to Planet GameCube for more impressions and reviews as March 22 creeps nearer…

Last updated: 09/21/2001

Until now, only PSX (and a very few Saturn) owners could enjoy the game that practically started Capcom's modern success...but that's all about to change. Capcom, in its infinite wisdom, has grown tired of the constant system-to-system ports and the games’ waning fear factor with each new entry. So, they’ve decided to keep Resident Evil on GameCube alone for the foreseeable future, and that deal will kick off with a “rebirth” of the original RE title for Nintendo’s console.

To say that Resident Evil is an influential game would be a tragic understatement. Although not the original “survival horror” game (that honor goes to Alone in the Dark), RE made the genre marketable and, subsequently, massively popular. It was one of the PlayStation’s first true killer apps and a major factor in that system’s dominance of the Japanese market in the years that followed. And, RE has already passed the “Mario Kart” test of influence; it has spawned dozens of other survival horror games, including a couple of new franchises from Capcom.

It can be hard to explain the Resident Evil premise and gameplay to someone who’s never played the game, but we’ll give it a go anyway (since we know many of you Nintendo fans aren’t at all familiar with RE). Basically, zombies have taken over a mansion in Raccoon City, and the S.T.A.R.S. special forces team has been sent to investigate. No one knows where these monsters came from, but S.T.A.R.S. is intent on stopping them before the infestation spreads. Without giving away too much of the story, the first team sent in disappears, so a second team is sent to find/rescue them and then to continue the investigation. Eventually you learn that these zombies are a result of a terrible biological weapon engineered by the evil Umbrella corporation (hence the game’s Japanese moniker: “Biohazard”).

The basic RE gameplay formula is you controlling a S.T.A.R.S. team member (in the first game, either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine) against computer-generated (a.k.a. pre-rendered) backgrounds. That means static camera angles, and it also explains the infamous RE control scheme. Basically, pressing up always makes your character move forward, and left and right simply turn. The system is practical in that the control doesn’t change as you shift from one camera angle to another, but it is (by practically all accounts) slow and clumsy during combat.

Combat is a fairly simple affair thanks to auto-aiming; the strategy lies in deciding when to fight and when to run, since ammo and health-restoring items tend to be quite rare. Zombies are, thankfully, not impervious to gunfire, but it can take five or more shots to put down just a single member of the undead community...plus, it’s not always clear when they’re dead and when they’re just playing dead! Puzzles are the other major gameplay component, and they tend to be skewed towards the bizarre, illogical stuff you might see in Alice in Wonderland or perhaps an episode of the 60s Batman television series.

Resident Evil was inspired by George Romero’s horror films, particularly Night of the Living Dead, and the game’s fright-factor depends heavily on surprises (a “licker” zombie jumps down from the ceiling, for instance) and the anxiety produced by resource scarcity. The ultimate example of this scarcity method is RE’s save system. There are very few typewriters (save points), and each save consumes an ink ribbon from your inventory. Run out of ink ribbons, and you could have to blast your way through dozens of baddies before finding another batch...the anxiety (and frustration) can be intense.

Now that you’ve been briefed on the original game and what it’s all about, it’s time to delve into the changes being implemented in the GameCube remake of Resident Evil. First and foremost, Shinji Mikami (the game’s creator and also the force behind Devil May Cry) has said explicitly that he wants to put the fear back into Resident Evil with the remake. Mikami feels that the original creepiness just wasn’t there in the RE sequels. (However, the original game will be the only one to fully receive its creators new vision, since the sequels will essentially be ported to GameCube.) Readers who have seen screenshots and/or video of the RE remake will already be able to see just how great the changes are working so far.

The development team seems to be extracting a lot of the campiness of the original PSX game. All the environments have been completely re-rendered with far more complex architecture and shading, and they all come across as more “real”-looking than the often weirdly-colored backgrounds of old. Since the first game’s release, the RE series has become infamous for the undeniably horrid and often hilarious voice acting. Nothing has been announced yet, but it seems at least very possible that Capcom will re-record the spoken dialogue and even rewrite some of the script in order to complement the visual makeover.

Graphically, Resident Evil for GameCube is already looking to be one of the most beautiful games ever created by anyone. Every environment has been completely remade, often with windows and other objects added for extra realism. Thanks to the power of the GameCube, each pre-rendered background will be displayed in twice the resolution as the old ones, and they will most likely be presented in 24-bit color depth for even more clarity. Many backgrounds will include sections of FMV for an animated look (seen quite often in Final Fantasy VIII and IX on PSX), and others will be entirely FMV. Yes, this opens up the possibility of dynamic camera angles, but probably only during scripted scenes such as a boss battle. GameCube's polygonal prowess won’t be ignored though; the characters and zombies are all exquisitely modeled and textured, and Capcom is reportedly motion-capturing new animations to match. Many environments will also include polygonal elements as needed, and unlike their old PSX counterparts, these real-time objects should be almost indiscernible against the CG backgrounds.

All that is to say nothing of the incredible lighting and shadowing effects we’ve already seen in pictures and movies. Some of the lighting is probably done within background FMV, but at least a good portion of it is processed in real-time thanks to the Flipper graphics chip. Walking through a dark room with a lamp illuminating only have the character’s face may have been a novelty in N64 games; in Resident Evil, it’s part of the game’s very essence. Indeed, many of the environments we’ve seen are quite dark, which only serves to heighten the atmosphere and make lighting even more integral to the gameplay.

Fans of the series shouldn’t expect sweeping gameplay refinements with this remake; after all, some of the apparent faults (limited inventory space, slow control, consumable saves) have been left intentionally because they contribute to the game’s themes of scarcity and anxiety. At most, Mikami-san may choose to incorporate analog control, especially since Nintendo fans are familiar with it from Angel Studios’ N64 port of RE2. Besides the obvious visual retooling, most of the changes will probably be to the story’s presentation and a few minor tweaks such as object placement.

But then again, this is Resident Evil, and millions of people around the world thought the original version of it was just dandy. Now this undeniable classic is getting the ultimate makeover...and you’ll only find it on GameCube.