Five Resident Evil games you've probably never heard of

Over the 25 years of its existence, the Resident Evil franchise has managed to acquire not only hit games with funny screen adaptations, but also a number of very strange titles. Some were born as a result of unsuccessful experiments, while others - because of attempts to grasp the immensity. Our today's material is devoted to the five of such "Residents".

---

 

Resident Evil 2 (Game.com) 

Before the massive spread of the Internet, few people in Russia knew about the existence of such a portable console as Game.com from Tiger. The odd URL-like name was the lesser of the problem. The platform, released in 1997, was equipped with the first touchscreen display in the history of portable phones, only it was black and white and, due to some technological features, was distinguished by very ragged animation. Nevertheless, several ports of the thundering titles like Duke Nukem 3D and Mortal Kombat Trilogy came out on the platform. The list also included Resident Evil 2, which lost its second campaign for Claire and some other content. 

On the one hand, the opportunity to walk around Raccoon City, sitting at a desk or being in transport, at that time seemed a real miracle. On the other hand, there is a wonderful expression about a hat, which seems to be out of place. And here, alas, this is the case - despite all the ambitiousness of the venture, playing such a game physically hurts because of the primitive animation and, as a result, the terribly unresponsive controls. Keep in mind that the frames shown below were recorded using an emulator - in the case of a real console, a terribly dim display was also used, on which it is almost more difficult to see anything than finding a needle in a haystack. 

Resident Evil (Game Boy Color) 

Let's allow ourselves a little cheating. The fact is that the port of the original RE to the 8-bit Game Boy Color, which seemed even more fantastic than RE2 for Game.com, never came out. During the development process, the British studio HotGen, which specialized in games for handhelds, encountered certain difficulties, as a result of which the project was canceled. People who looked at the screenshots in the then igropress probably thought that they were being bred, and it is impossible to implement something like that in principle. But then Alone in The Dark: The New Nightmare came out, and it became clear that the rule “if you really want it, you can” is more relevant than ever. 

And now, over the years, images of two Resident Evil prototypes appeared on the Internet, 90 percent ready. The game in this form is teeming with bugs, it lacks all enemies, except for the usual zombies, and it is impossible to reach the final credits in principle. But how accurately the gameplay is reproduced, adjusted for the capabilities of a portable handheld weak for such games! If HotGen had finished what it started, then the portable "Resik" would probably be carried on the hands. Literally.

Resident Evil Gaiden 

Despite the annoying false start with the porting, one game in the Resident Evil series still saw the light of day on the Game Boy Color, and an exclusive one. Those who thought the liner first appeared in Resident Evil Revelations as a setting will be surprised. She was overtaken by  Gaiden, in which Leon Kennedy and Barry Burton were the protagonists. While exploring the surroundings of the ship, teeming with revived carrion and other creatures of the T-virus, the heroes unexpectedly encounter a mysterious girl named Lucia, who has psychic abilities. 

With the right approach, Resident Evil Gaiden could claim the status of something meaningful. The developers did not transfer the gameplay from PS1 and other platforms as it is, but divided the adventure and combat components into two segments with different mechanics. By default, you just run around the location with a top view, look for items and try to carefully avoid enemies. But if a close contact still took place, then the game turns into a first-person shooter, where you need to ... press a key in time to match a completely deranged timing. Plus, the quest part in this game was greatly nerfed, in fact, reduced to a banal scheme "find an object here and use it there."

Resident Evil Survivor 2 - Code: Veronica 

And while the first attempt to turn Resident Evil into a light gun shooter turned out to be a lump, the experimenters at Capcom did not give up. As a result, a kind of remake of Code: Veronica was released on the arcades in 2001, which for obvious reasons became a cult among the owners of the Dreamcast, but not very loudly declared itself in the series. In fact, this is just a free retelling of the events of the original without quest elements and with enemies borrowed from the past parts. 

The irony is that a bonus mode that is very similar in concept and so was present in Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, albeit adjusted for a third-person view. And if Battle Mode proved to be quite good as an optional entertainment, then Resident Evil Survivor 2 - Code: Veronica, frankly, lacked either depth or dynamics. Released a few years earlier, The House of The Dead 2 simply put the game on its shoulder in all respects, including graphics. The port on PS2 came out in Japan in 2001 and only a year later reached Europe, where few people were interested. In our wonderful country, where the next generation console from Sonyat that time, only a few owned, a similar stub from the main series was needed about the same as the dog's fifth leg. And when the mass distribution of chip consoles and pirated discs began, Resident Evil Survivor 2 - Code: Veronica almost did not come across on the shelves due to its age and low relevance.

Resident Evil: Dead Aim 

As in the case of the above game, Dead Aim came out at a time when PS2 was still a luxury item, so few people in Russia knew about the game before torrenting. In a sense, it can be called a remake of Gaiden- again a ship, again dividing into a shooter and quest component. And even though everything was fine with the shooting this time, the attempt to sit on two chairs still did not end well. Quest mechanics were too primitive to correspond to the previous parts, and the shooter part turned out to be too sluggish against the background even, God forgive me, mossy at that time The House of The Dead 2, as well as other representatives of the genre released on PS2. 

And, of course, the plot is worthy of a separate "phi". The late screenwriter Noboru Sugimura , who came from the world of cinema, has always been distinguished by his love of "strained drama for the sake of drama," sometimes contrary to logic. Suffice it to recall the krinj love story between Leon and Aida in RE2, which left behind a lot of memes. But here the maestro gave something even more incomprehensible. I don't even want to spoil anything - it's better to see everything yourself on the same YouTube.