It is the first main installment in Capcom's Resident Evil series. Set in the fictional Arklay mountain region in the Midwest, players control Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, members of the elite task force S.T.A.R.S., who must escape a mansion infested with zombies and other monsters.

The Story Behind Resident Evil

Resident Evil was a best-seller in Japan, North America, and Europe, including the United Kingdom. Overall, despite having been written before the retcon introduced in the Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil Zero, the book still maintains overall similarity to what the story warped into in the early 2000s. The player and anyone they saved escape to a helipad where they fire a flare to signal Brad, who is still flying his helicopter looking for them.

Mikami said he was "a little worried about how well a horror game would really sell." Anpo said that Capcom did not expect the game to be successful. Shinji Mikami was commissioned to make a game set in a haunted mansion like Sweet Home. Just like the PC version, the door animations can be skipped as well as the cut scenes.

How Resident Evil Plays

The environment is presented from a third-person perspective, using fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds, while the player uses tank controls to move. While the player can procure other firearms to defend themselves, including a Remington Model 870 and a Colt Python, there is limited ammunition throughout the area, preventing the player from killing everything they come across. In Resident Evil, the player chooses to play as either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine as they explore the Spencer Mansion to find their missing compatriots and secure an escape route.

Certain parts of the environment can be examined, items can be collected, heavy objects can be pushed around, and the player can navigate from room to room using doors, stairs, or elevators. Certain items are needed to solve puzzles and either provide the player with more supplies or open new areas. Chris and Jill begin with only a survival knife and a Beretta M92FS, and zombies and various other monsters scattered around the Mansion will attack them on sight.

Why Players Still Load It Up

The player eventually comes to discover that the mansion was a research facility of Umbrella, a pharmaceutical corporation that was secretly producing Bio Organic Weapons (B.O.W.s) for unknown purposes. GameSpot listed Resident Evil as one of the 15 most influential video games of all time. At an underground laboratory beneath the mansion, the player discovers that Wesker is the mole, being an employee of Umbrella placed in S.T.A.R.S. to keep an eye on their operations; He also blackmailed Barry into helping him under the threat of Umbrella killing his family, but if Barry survives, he turns on Wesker upon learning that he was bluffing as he betrayed Umbrella for his personal interests.

The soundtrack was generally deemed inferior to the original, with the ambient theme for the mansion's basement considered to be one of the worst video game compositions of all time. A Game Boy Color version of the game, developed by the Software House HotGen, was supposed to be released in late 1999 or early 2000, until Capcom decided to cancel this project citing that the port was poor quality due to the Game Boy's limited hardware. At this stage of development, a local co-op mode was present, along with different outfits.

Resident Evil — Frequently Asked Questions