I know I wrote about the cutesy-looking Resident Evil Game Boy Demake recently, but did you know that there was a version of the game for the Game Boy Color that was almost finished but ultimately cancelled?
Just think about the mammoth task of trying to put a PS1 game onto a Game Boy Color cartridge and make it look anything like the original title. That's why I love demakes, after all, but this was a task that HotGen studios were given back in 1999 to try and put the epic Zombie-culling marvel onto Nintendo's family-friendly portable handheld.
You know how these things work - it was shown at E3 1999, then delays pushed it further back, and then people started getting cold feet about it and Capcom ultimately cancelled it. Or, as assistant programmer on the project Pete Firth explained that, alongside the unfortunate death of the lead artist on the project, the creator of Resident Evil (though we don't know whether he specifically meant Shinji Mikami or Tokuro Fujiwara) personally asked for the game to be cancelled because it didn't portray his creation properly.
Talk about a vote of no confidence!
I can't begin to imagine how tough it must have been to fit that entire game onto a 2MB cartridge (probably a little like trying to put Hogwarts Legacy on a Nintendo Switch cartridge, in all honesty!). I know the Game Boy Color eventually got Resident Evil Gaiden, but that looks wholly like a GBC title, not a descaled PS1 game.
Still, despite the odds, HotGen actually managed to create an 8-bit Resident Evil that you could play and feel like you were looking at an incredibly retro version of the PS1 and Saturn title. It's not like you look at it and think 'this is a simplified version' like Donkey Kong Land and Donkey Kong Country - the original locations, puzzles, angles and narrative remain the same, albeit with sprites that have been scaled down to work with the limitations of the GBC.
I say limitations - this port pushed the GBC to the limits, with scaled sprites that tried to recreate that same 3D feeling as the home console games. And now, thanks to Games That Weren't, we finally have the most stable and finished example of the game that we've ever had from the moment before it was cancelled. According to VGC, it's the most complete version that we've had since the ROMs for this mammoth undertaking were released online to the public in 2011, and now 14 years later, fans can finally experience all of HotGen's hard work.
When Games that Weren't spoke to the developer Nigel Speight back in 2020, he recalled that the game was only supposed to have 35% of the original game with many rooms being reused, but Virgin kept asking for more and more of the original content to be included in the title.
When he finished working on the project, he says it was around 75-85% complete. Pete Frith has said publicly that he believed it to be 98% finished due to the fact that there was a lot of back and forth with game testers, which meant that it would have been almost ready to go at the time of cancellation.
While Games That Weren't haven't actually played the game through to completion, they're pretty confident that this version is playable through to the end, or that the end can at least be reached, at any rate. 'Crucially, we know that the Tyrant seems to be present at the end, they write on their website, 'and it's possible to trigger the end sequence compared to the earlier builds. We have a hack further below that jumps you near the end, so that you can see this for yourself.'
So it's not fully complete with a few minor hickups, but it's the most playable version we've had of the original game to date. You can get more information and download the GBC version of Resident Evil to play on Delta or your chosen emulator on the Games That Weren't Resident Evil page.
