Resident Evil has been going for years as one of the most prolific horror franchises in gaming, but it was just revealed that the timeline for the series might have been very different. Originally, the first Resident Evil game was in development for SNES and not the original PlayStation like it would eventually come to.
Revealed in a recent interview with Game Informer for the announcement of Mega Man 11, Capcom’s Koji Oda gave this surprising insight into the beginning of the series. Oda said this regarding Resident Evil on SNES:
“Honestly, I feel like I joined the game industry at the best time. Typically, games would take half a year and no longer than a year to develop, so I feel like I was able to take part in a lot of different projects. It’s not that well known, but before Resident Evil went to the PlayStation, I was working on it for the Super NES.”
Also: Resident Evil Revelations Collection Review – It Takes Two to Tango
Resident Evil was created as a spiritual successor to Capcom’s previous horror game Sweet Home on NES, which is seen as one of the pioneers of the horror video game genre. When the PlayStation launched in 1994, its success led to Capcom switching gears and moving the first Resident Evil to that console instead of the SNES. Oda gave some more interesting details on this alternate version of Resident Evil in the interview:
“This was back before the name Resident Evil had even been assigned to it. The codename for this was literally just ‘horror game.’ On the SNES, we were working with limited hard drive space, so it’s not like we could dump a movie in there. If we had actually completed it on the SNES, I’m sure it would have been considerably different. For example, it was originally set in a place that had nothing to do with reality – more of a hellish place.”
It’s intriguing to see what could’ve been for the Resident Evil series. However, Resident Evil is now available on Switch through the recent releases of the Revelations Collection. Check out our review on those games here.
