The History of Resident Evil

A haunted house rebuilt in 3D, expected to sell 200,000 copies. It sold millions and named a genre.

Resident Evil reached the PlayStation in Japan on March 22, 1996, in North America on April 1, and in Europe on August 16. In Japan it is Biohazard. Players choose Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine of the S.T.A.R.S. team, trapped in the Spencer Mansion above Raccoon City, and the game they are playing, fixed cameras, scarce ammunition, ink ribbons spent to save, becomes the template survival horror is built from.

THE MAKING

A producer, a reluctant director, and a Super NES start

The game was conceived by producer Tokuro Fujiwara, who had directed the 1989 Famicom horror game Sweet Home and wanted to do the things its hardware had forbidden, mainly on the graphics front. He handed direction to Shinji Mikami, who was initially reluctant because he hated being scared, which Fujiwara took as proof he understood what is frightening. Production began in 1993, planned first for the Super NES, and moved to the PlayStation in 1994.

The design changed shape repeatedly. It began as a fully 3D first person game with a supernatural Japanese horror style, turned toward American zombie horror under George A. Romero's influence, and settled when Mikami discovered Alone in the Dark and adopted its cinematic fixed camera system, which let pre-rendered backgrounds carry far more detail than the PlayStation could draw in real time. A cooperative mode existed in early prototypes and was cut as not good enough. Several mansion backdrops were inspired by the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. By the end the team numbered upwards of 80 people.

Nobody at Capcom expected a phenomenon. Fujiwara targeted a core audience and expected around 200,000 copies. Mikami said he was a little worried about how well a horror game would really sell. The game became the best selling PlayStation title of its moment.

THE DESIGN

Scarcity as the engine

Almost everything that defines the series is already here: the limited inventory (six slots for Chris, eight for Jill, who also starts with a lockpick), item boxes and typewriters in safe rooms, herbs and first aid sprays, notes and diaries carrying the story, door loading sequences, and multiple endings decided by who survives. Ammunition is deliberately too scarce to kill everything, a choice scenario writer Kenichi Iwao traced to the limited supplies of the MSX game Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress.

The score, by Makoto Tomozawa, Akari Kaida, Masami Ueda, and Hideaki Utsumi, works the same economy as the design: long quiet stretches in the safe rooms, then strings when the mansion wakes. What the game sounded like became a story of its own two years later, and it has its own page in this Library.

THE EDITIONS

The versions, documented

Japan · 1996

PlayStation, March 22, 1996. The uncensored original: the full live action intro, and a vocal ending theme by Fumitaka Fuchigami that no other version carries.

America · 1996

PlayStation, April 1, 1996. The intro was heavily cut, auto-aim disabled, ink ribbons reduced, and the game made harder at the American staff's request so it could not be finished inside a rental.

Windows · 1996

The uncensored footage restored and in color, two new unlockable weapons, and door animations that can be skipped. The only version with every FMV sequence intact.

Saturn · 1997

An unlockable battle mode, a zombie Wesker, a gold Tyrant, and exclusive Hunters called Ticks. The Japanese Saturn version is the most gore laden of all.

Director's Cut · 1997

An arranged mode moving nearly every item and enemy, made to compensate for Resident Evil 2's delay and bundled with its demo. Its promised uncensored footage was still cut, by a localization mistake Capcom admitted.

Dual Shock Ver. · 1998

Analog control and vibration, plus a new symphonic soundtrack credited to Mamoru Samuragochi. In 2014 he admitted it was ghostwritten. The basement theme is ranked among the worst compositions in games.

Deadly Silence · 2006

The Nintendo DS tenth anniversary port: Classic mode, a Rebirth mode with touch puzzles and knife battles, and the pre-Dual Shock soundtrack restored.

The missing Game Boy Color

A near complete Game Boy Color port by HotGen was cancelled for quality. Its unfinished builds leaked in 2012 and 2025.

THE RECEPTION

Scores, sales, and the dissent

Famitsu · 38 / 40

Scores of 9, 10, 10, and 9: one of the magazine's three highest rated games of 1996, beside Super Mario 64 and Tekken 2.

Metacritic · 91 / 100

Aggregated from the PlayStation reviews. GameSpot called it one of those rare games almost as entertaining to watch as to play.

Sales · About 4 million by 1997

By December 1997 the original had sold about four million copies and grossed more than $200 million. Capcom's own count puts all PlayStation versions together at 5.08 million.

The dissent · The voices

Next Generation and GamePro both called the dialogue and cinematics laughable even while praising the fear. Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2008 entered it for Worst Game Dialogue Ever.

The dissent and the praise are the same fact seen from two sides: a B movie surface over a design nobody had built before. The voice acting has its own page in this Library.

THE LEGACY

What it left behind

Resident Evil was the first game dubbed a survival horror, a term it coined for its genre, and it is credited with returning zombies to popular culture. It entered the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2024. Its own roots, in Sweet Home and in Fujiwara's brief to Mikami, are documented on the page this history doors to below: the one link this page makes to that shelf, because that story is already told there in full.