GAME · 1996
Resident Evil
- Developer
- Capcom
- Publisher
- Capcom
- Platforms
- Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows
- Original title
- Bio Hazard
34 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
27 Facts From the Development of Resident Evil
- #001
Resident Evil borrowed many of its gameplay systems from Sweet Home, including limited item inventory management and a mansion setting.
- #002
Resident Evil took from Sweet Home its puzzle-solving and survival emphasis, along with a door loading screen and scattered notes and diary entries used to tell the story.
- #003
Resident Evil's design follows Sweet Home in offering multiple endings that depend on how many characters survive, and in requiring backtracking to earlier locations to solve puzzles later.
- #004
Resident Evil inherited from Sweet Home death animations, individual character items such as a lockpick or lighter, health restored through items found across the mansion, an intricate mansion layout and brutally horrific imagery.
- #005
According to scenario writer Kenichi Iwao, the limited ammunition in Resident Evil was partly inspired by the MSX port of Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress, whose randomized dungeons featured a limited amount of supplies.
- #006
Kenichi Iwao wanted to draw further elements from Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress into Resident Evil, including additional ways to attack zombies using items such as mines and traps, but schedule constraints prevented this.
- #007
Development of Resident Evil began in 1993 and took three years to complete.
- #008
For the first six months of Resident Evil's development, Mikami worked alone, producing concept sketches, designing characters and writing more than 40 pages of script.
- #009
Resident Evil was initially planned for the Super NES before its development moved to the PlayStation in 1994.
- #010
Resident Evil was initially conceived as a fully 3D, first-person game with action and shooting mechanics, and a first-person prototype was produced.
- #011
Before adopting an American zombie horror style influenced by George A. Romero films, Resident Evil's first-person prototype had a supernatural, psychological Japanese horror style similar to Sweet Home.
- #012
Mikami was initially reluctant to adopt Alone in the Dark's fixed-view camera system because he felt it made the player more detached, but adopted it since pre-rendered backdrops allowed more detail than his fully 3D first-person prototype, which did not suit the original PlayStation's specifications.
- #013
Early footage of Resident Evil's co-op prototype, which included a local co-op mode and different outfits, was shown in 1995.
- #014
A 1995 V Jump Festival demo of Resident Evil in Japan added real-time weapon changes and dropped the co-op mode, using rudimentary character models and textures.
- #015
Resident Evil cut several planned elements before release, including a graveyard, guest houses and a tower; the graveyard later appeared in the 2002 remake, while the guest houses and tower became the guard house and the lab.
- #020
Resident Evil was developed largely on Silicon Graphics hardware using the software Softimage.
- #021
The PlayStation served as the lead platform for Resident Evil because the development team judged it the most suitable for the game, including in terms of polygon capacity.
- #022
Toward the end of Resident Evil's development, the team grew to more than 80 people.
- #023
According to Akio Sakai, head of Capcom's consumer software division, Capcom hesitated to port Resident Evil to the Saturn because the hardware was less ideally suited to the game than the PlayStation, which would have made the port lengthy; a Saturn version was finally unveiled at the April 1997 Tokyo Game Show, where Capcom also showed a demo for the sequel on PlayStation.
- #027
Japanese voice performances recorded for Resident Evil were left unused because Mikami judged their quality inadequate, and lead programmer Yasuhiro Anpo later said the Japanese development staff had been unaware of the poor localization that hurt the international release's realism and immersion, contributing to the 2002 remake's re-dub.
- #028
Fujiwara said Resident Evil was originally aimed at a core audience, and he expected sales of only about 200,000 copies before the game sold millions.
- #029
Mikami said he was somewhat concerned about how well a horror game would sell.
- #030
According to Anpo, Capcom did not anticipate that Resident Evil would succeed.
- #031
Resident Evil was renamed for the North American and European markets after Chris Kramer, Capcom's director of communications, noted that the title Bio Hazard could not be trademarked in the United States. The names Bio-Hazard Battle, a 1992 video game, and the New York alternative metal band Biohazard were already in use.
- #032
Capcom held an internal company contest to choose a new name, and Resident Evil was selected because the game is set in a mansion.
- #033
Chris Kramer considered the name Resident Evil "super-cheesy," but the rest of the marketing crew liked it and convinced Capcom Japan and Mikami-san that it suited the game.
- #034
Bill Sienkiewicz created the cover artwork for the American and European release of Resident Evil.
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Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work