Porting of Resident Evil 2

After its initial release for the PlayStation in January 1998, Resident Evil 2 was reissued and ported to other systems, often gaining new features in the process.

Dual Shock Ver.
The first re-release was the Dual Shock Ver. on PlayStation, which incorporated support for the vibration and analog control functions of the DualShock controller. Other additions include a new unlockable "Extreme Battle" mini-game and an "Arrange Mode" sub menu with unique gameplay difficulties. One of these is "Rookie" mode, which shares the same difficulty as the original "Easy" mode but enables the player to start the main story with the S. Machine Gun in the inventory and the Gatling Gun and Rocket Launcher in the item box. All three weapons have unlimited ammo. A "U.S.A. Version" mode exclusive to the Japanese release featured the gameplay additions of  Resident Evil 2' s North American releases.

Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2 differs most from the other releases. Over the course of twelve months and with a budget of $1 million, Resident Evil 2 was ported to the console by a staff of about 20 employees from Capcom Production Studio 3, Angel Studios, and Factor 5. This version offers features that were not included on any other system, such as different alternate costumes and new blue tinted results screens, the ability to adjust the degree of violence and to change the blood color, a new gameplay mode that randomizes resorative items and ammo pickups during each playthrough, and a more responsive first-person control scheme. Additionally, the port features 16 new in-game documents known as the "Ex Files", written by Tetsuro Oyama. Hidden throughout the A and B scenarios, they reveal new information about the series' lore and connect the story of Resident Evil 2 to those of the other installments. The Nintendo 64 version adjusts its display resolution depending on the number of polygonal models currently on screen, and supports the console's Expansion Pak accessory for a maximum resolution of 640×480 during gameplay. Other visual enhancements include smoother character animations and sharper, perspective-corrected textures for the 3D models. The music of the Nintendo 64 version utilizes Dolby Surround, and was converted by Chris Hülsbeck, Rudolf Stember and Thomas Engel. The team reworked the sound set from the ground up to provide each instrument with a higher sample rate than on the PlayStation, thus resulting in higher-quality music. Despite these improvements, some game elements suffered due to the limited space on the cartridge which are absent from other versions of the game. All in-game textures and backgrounds are smaller and need to stretch, full-motion video scenes are lower quality, and streamed sound samples such as voice acting have less clarity. Some features from the other enhanced ports do not appear in the Nintendo 64 version, such as the "Extreme Battle" minigame and "Data Gallery" menu.

Game.com
Tiger Electronics released a sprite-based 2.5D version for their Game.com handheld in late 1998. It included only Leon's story path, and removed several of the original game's core features. Despite the severe technical limitations of the system / having had to have been built from the ground up, the game does manage to retain many of the original screens and puzzles from the game (albeit in a completely re-drawn, monochrome color form).

Perhaps the most noticeable feature missing from the game is any semblance of a story past the intro slideshow (which recounts the events of the original Resident Evil). No attempt is made to recreate any of the cutscenes in the game, either the FMVs or the conversations between characters. Without a previous knowledge of the events of the full game, players are left with little context for their actions or a sense of what location they are in.

All in all, while the efforts to port the game to the underpowered handheld are technically impressive for the console (similar to the case of the Game Boy Color remake of the original Resident Evil), it leaves for a game which only vaguely resembles the original. Like many Game.com games, critics were harsh in their reviews of it, and no other entries in the series were ever planned to be ported to the system again.

Game Boy Advance: Tech Demo
Sometime in 1999, Raylight Studios developed an unofficial tech demo of Resident Evil 2 for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance utilizing their Blue Roses engine to test it's capabilities, the game starts with the full length intro prologue and proceeds in-game, there are 2 playable rooms, a semi-working inventory and one type of zombie enemies.

Personal Computer / Various others


The Dual Shock Ver. served as the basis for the majority of ports, such as the Windows 9x-based PC-CD release, which was titled Resident Evil 2 Platinum in North America. Aside from retaining all previously added features, the PC version can be run in higher resolutions. A "Data Gallery" was added to the main menu, allowing the player to view movies, rough sketches, illustrations and 3D models. In February 2006, a Japan-exclusive, Windows XP-compatible PC-DVD re-release was published. Developed by Sourcenext, it included high-quality FMVs encoded at a resolution of 640×480 pixels.

The Dreamcast version keeps the additions from the original PC release, runs at 60 frames per second during gameplay, and incorporates real-time display of the character's condition on the Visual Memory Unit peripheral. The Japanese edition of the Dreamcast port was given the subtitle Value Plus and came with a playable demo of Resident Evil CODE:Veronica. An unmodified port of the Dual Shock Ver. was released for the Nintendo GameCube. The initial PlayStation version was re-released on the Japanese PlayStation Network in 2007, while the service's North American counterpart received the Dual Shock Ver. two years later.

A port of Resident Evil 2 for the Sega Saturn was developed internally at Capcom for a time, but technical difficulties led to its cancellation in October 1998.

Remake
Many fans of the Resident Evil series have asked Capcom to create a remake of Resident Evil 2 similar to the one they had done with the original Resident Evil. Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi told Gamestop that the studio is not working on a Resident Evil 2 Remake but are open to creating it if there is enough interest from the fans. This resulted in many petitions being created by the fans of the series who are collecting signatures hoping to show Capcom that the fans of the series are open to the Remake. As of 12/08/2015 a producer from Capcom's R&D division 1, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, has announced that there will be a HD remake of Resident Evil 2 coming in the future.