It’s been 20 years to the day since Capcom released the original Resident Evil game for the PlayStation, under its Japanese name of Biohazard, and the company is celebrating with a series of retrospective developer interviews – the first of which you can see above. Producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi joined Capcom during the production of the original game, and has been involved in many of the series’ best-loved games including the 2002 Gamecube remake of Resident Evil and 2005’s Resident Evil 4.
Retro-loving fans of the series are being well catered for this year, as Capcom has recently released the Resident Evil Origins Collection, featuring HD updates of the Resident Evil remake and the 2003 prequel Resident Evil Zero. That’s not all, as Capcom announced back in August that a Resident Evil 2 remake has been given the green light. The enormously popular sequel had a troubled development, famously being restarted part-way through, but the end result was an amazing game that topped our readers’ vote as the best PlayStation game ever back in issue 127.
If you’re unfamiliar with Resident Evil and wondering what all the fuss is about, the survival horror series follows the spread of biological horrors around the world, from the series’ trademark zombies to mutated animals and more. Players take control of a cast of characters including Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy in order to survive and stop them, often coming up against the evil Umbrella Corporation and Albert Wesker in the process. Early games were characterised by their fixed camera angles, lack of ammunition and puzzle solving, but 2005’s excellent Resident Evil 4 shifted the series to a more action-oriented model with over-the-shoulder gunplay. At present it’s Capcom’s most popular series ever, with sales handily exceeding the likes of Street Fighter, Mega Man and Monster Hunter.
Want to know more? Retro Gamer has you covered. We featured the history of Resident Evil in issue 95, covering everything up to 2011. For individual games, we’ve covered the making of Resident Evil in issue 61, the Resident Evil remake in issue 139, Resident Evil 4 in issue 150 and the Game Boy spin-off Resident Evil Gaiden in issue 89.