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Resident Evil Prototype Preview


Areala

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blog-0244742001359585244.jpgEven if you played the daylights out of Resident Evil, even if you can beat the game handily with an S-ranking and one hand tied behind your back, you've never seen Resident Evil quite like this...

EGM previewed the original Resident Evil for the Playstation back in issue #75 in their "Next Wave" column. This was over two years before the game made it to the US, and still very much in its beta stage. And wow, what a difference a couple of years makes! Click that picture to your left and check out this treasure trove of retro goodness.

The polygon count for characters in these images is far lower than the final product, but what's even more awesome is to see the two-player mode not only discussed in the text, but shown in the screenshots! Yeah, that's Jill tagging along with Chris in several of those images. Way before it had a street date announced in Japan, Capcom was forced to ditch the two-player mode. These pics from EGM are one of the only ways to get a glimpse at what could have been. It's not until the PS2 era that we get a truly multi-player Resident Evil experience, so the idea we might have had it in 1997 is intriguing to say the least.

A few other changes are also immediately obvious, like the room with the snake encounter. And what are those weird things on the floor of the wallpapered hallway? Everyone remembers the dobermans busting through the windows in the final version...were those some sort of wriggling insect enemy they did away with? Dead chunks of a gun-blasted zombie? The world may never know...

In any case, enjoy this forgotten look at this genre-defying Playstation classic!

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Those weird things on the floor are just part of the floor texture. They can be seen in both pics of the hallway and they're evenly spaced out. In any case, thanks for the walk down memory lane. (I was one of those people who could beat it with one hand behind my back.) ;)

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  • Retromags Curator

Those weird things on the floor are just part of the floor texture. They can be seen in both pics of the hallway and they're evenly spaced out. In any case, thanks for the walk down memory lane. (I was one of those people who could beat it with one hand behind my back.) ;)

Thanks for the correction, Kombatologist. The resolution was just

too small for me to make out what those things were. I was hoping for

wriggling bits of zombie flesh, but...oh well. :)

Do you ever do any Let's Plays of your games? I'm always looking for good new game-related channels... :)

*huggles*

Areala

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Thanks for posting this, what issue of EGM was this in? There's a small chance I might have the magazine, I do have a handful of them from around 93-95...

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I've read through production docs, concept art, and read every piece of trivia about Resident Evil 1, but I have never heard of this multiplayer prototype. I'd love to actually see it in action and see how the story would play out. Not every ending got both Chris and Jill out.

Thanks for posting this. Incredible find.

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  • Retromags Curator

Thanks for posting this. Incredible find.

You're most welcome. This is why I love back-issues: the hindsight is truly 20-20. :)

*huggles*

Areala

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