The Resident Evil Gallery

In Japan every one of these games is Biohazard; in the West the series is Resident Evil, a name an office contest supplied when Biohazard could not be trademarked in America, a story this Library tells on its Names shelf. The boxes argue the same split. Japan's first cover is a bloodshot eye and red letters. America's is a Bill Sienkiewicz painting. Some pairs share a composition, some share nothing but the game inside, and one Japanese box is an empty hallway with the title spelled out in small white letters.

Every cover below is a door. Behind it sits the game's history, how Capcom made it and how its own era received it, and behind that, the questions its fans still ask. Japanese covers are shown from photographs of the genuine boxes, and the captions say so.