Resident Evil (1996 game)/development

Resident Evil was created by a team of staff members who would later become part of Capcom Production Studio 4. The inspiration for Resident Evil was the earlier Capcom horror game Sweet Home. Shinji Mikami was initially commissioned to make a game set in a haunted mansion like Sweet Home, which Resident Evil was originally intended to be a remake of. The game was initially conceived as a first-person shooter, but soon the gameplay system inspired by Alone in the Dark was adopted instead. According to Mikami, "technically it wasn’t good enough."

Several locations, concepts, items and enemies cut from the early versions of the game were later re-introduced in the 2002 remake. A 1995 development version featured the characters Dewey and Gelzer, which were later replaced by Rebecca and Barry, respectively (a redesigned Dewey also appeared in Resident Evil Outbreak).

English localization


The original PlayStation version of Resident Evil featured several considerable changes between its original Japanese release and its English-language counterparts. The North American and European versions of the intro were heavily cut from the one featured in the Japanese releases. Shots of mangled corpses, a "Cerberus" zombie dog being shot, and Joseph's death were edited out, as well as scenes featuring the character Chris Redfield smoking a cigarette. Despite these tweaks, the game was ultimately released on the PlayStation as one of the first games to receive the mature rating from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

In the game itself, the auto-aiming function was disabled and the numbers of ink ribbons found by the player were reduced. Capcom also planned to eliminate the "fourth dimensional" item boxes for the North American version (meaning that any item the player stored in one item box could not be retrieved in another), but they were restored for the released version of the game in North America.

The Japanese releases all contain English voice acting with Japanese captions and text. Japanese voice acting for the game was also recorded, but was left unused. According to Mikami, the Japanese voice acting was removed from the game as he found the quality of the performances to be unsatisfactory. The Japanese PlayStation version, Bio Hazard, also features a vocal ending theme performed by Fumitaka Fuchigami that was not in any other versions of the game.

Title change
The game was originally called Bio Hazard in Japan. However, it was decided to change the name in North America and Europe after Chris Kramer, the Director of Communications at Capcom, pointed out that it would be impossible to trademark "Biohazard" in the United States. Among others, another game and a band already were using the name. Capcom therefore decided to run a contest within its company to find a new name. They eventually settled on Resident Evil, since the game takes place in a mansion. Interviewed by GamesRadar, Chris Kramer said: "'I thought it was super-cheesy; can’t remember what I felt was a better alternative, probably something stupid about zombies – but the rest of the marketing crew loved it and were ultimately able to convince Capcom Japan and Mikami-san that the name fit.'"