Resident Evil (GBC): Introduction

I'm fascinated by the concept of demakes, versions of modern games intended to look like older titles. Making games which change more modern concepts into older frameworks and often graphical designs. To a certain extent, it's an independant developer shamelessly stealing the popularity of something else to further his own. The inevitable DMCA is hardly shocking. It's playing with fire and then expecting to not get burned.

Resident Evil on Gameboy Color is sort of a strange predecessor to this genre of games. It's the Playstation classic, now on a portable system. It's entirely official, which I'm pretty sure has never happened since, and it wasn't really intended as a demake. It's just one of those ports to a system that shouldn't really have it. Kind of like Resident Evil 2 on the Game.com. It doesn't matter what it plays like, what matters is that it is a port to the system.

Except it was never released for reasons that seem to make sense. Let's make an original game for the system, and thus Gaiden was born. Except this wasn't just weighing two different prototypes. Even back in the day when we just had earlier versions, this game went pretty far in the game, as far as the Lab, so I've read. This is a recent leak of what was one of the final revisions, and it's just missing beta testing, you can get to the end and everything. I don't understand why you would go through the more expensive part of developing a game and then flake out on actually selling it.

I'm unable to use my usual emulator, which is the multi-system Mednaffe. Instead, I'm using Sameboy. Which I'm going to say that while I hate looking a gift horse in the mouth, unpaid labor for allowing me to play a game that by all accounts, I shouldn't be able to, but would it kill someone to include an in-emulator screenshot function? There's all this complicated stuff to decide how you want to emulate the system, but nothing for making a simple screenshot?

Asides over, time to get to the game. After a series of company logos we get a bit-crushed voice saying Resident Evil. Less the creepy intro of the console games and more a bored man in accounting. That eye's kind of creepy. If I wait on the title screen, it cycles through a bunch of game backgrounds, promising scenes straight from the end of the game. They're quite variable in design, some being simple with very little dithering, others being obvious Game Boy-ized versions of the PSX backgrounds. 

There's the usual choice, with these screens obviously being copies of the PSX shots. I'll be playing as Jill, as I normally do.

 

The game removes the intro cinematic and instead just shows the intro...narration? I don't quite remember how it went, but we get the classic opening dialog. They barely made it to the mansion past the dogs, and Jill is worried about Chris. You can almost hear the classic voices saying the dialog. It's odd hearing it in dead silence, except for when a gunshot (or what passes for one on this sound system.) attracts our heroes attention.

There are also the door animations. Because the GBC comes off as a portable NES, this feels somewhat Sweet Home-ish. Somewhat.

First impressions, the graphics look odd and the music feels like it should be in a Castlevania game. Because the GBC has only four buttons the controls of the game suffer. Start pauses, total pause, select opens the item screen. The D-pad moves, tank controls, A is activate and B holds up your current weapon. A then shoots. There is no quick turn, but you can run by going forward and holding B. Turning speed is horrifically bad, but walking is good enough. 

It's obvious from the get-go that the game is a bit different than what I was expecting. Okay, maybe it's been too long since I last played the game, but I'm pretty sure there was a big table here, as Barry says, this is the dining room, and windows. There's the clock and there's a vase with nothing inside it. Wasn't there an ink ribbon here? I feel like I'm missing a lot of stuff here.

The inventory has what I expect it to, a gun, a knife and a first aid spray. The first problem is that I don't know how many bullets are in the gun. The second is that if I use the file function, I get most of the game's files. Some of the cracks are already starting to appear. What's worse is that while I was testing the gun seemed to have infinite ammo. I'll try to use the knife anyway, since I'm man enough for it. 

Barry is doing his usual "I hope this isn't Chris's blood" schtick on the other side of the room. At this point, I feel compelled to say that the font in this game is terrible. In a random sentence I wouldn't know if the small g is supposed to be a b. It's not really creepy and it doesn't add to the atmosphere, so I don't understand it. Also, the second I move around, Barry disappears.

The first zombie just gives you this image when you approach. Which is...eugh. Somehow it manages to keep the nastiness of the guy. That, or I'm attributing some of the nastiness of Return of the Living Dead to this guy. Since that film does have a few notable bald zombies and it's very likely these original developers saw that film.

Combat is crap. Because you move slower, it's easy for this guy to grab onto you, and you can't actually go too far or he gets loaded out of memory and doesn't move. Also, when you kill them, they just fall on their knees. Which is something that definitely could not be exploited to make suggestive screenshots and I would never do something like that. There's a magazine on Kenneth's corpse.

I return to Barry, and the usual cutscene plays. Jill panics, the zombie walks in and Barry blasts him. Three bullets! Did I misremember the original? That's a lot from a magnum. They decide to return to Wesker. Which I have to walk to manually.

They call out for Wesker, but get no answer. Barry tells Jill to search for him, but not to leave the hallway. This, oddly, is automated. They try to figure out what's going on here, and he says we should split up and search for our compatriots. He hands Jill the lockpick, and says to search just the first floor. Later, we should meet back up here.

Before I continue on, I decide to check the nearby typewriter. It has an ink ribbon, but like the gun and magazine, it has no item count on it. I should check the save system anyway. There's an "interrupt" save system, where if you turn off the machine while on it, it allows you to continue from there. Which feels like it's very impressive coding, all things considered.

In the next room is a map. The usual one. Gotta say, pushing in this version is terrible. Slowly walk against it and something slowly moves. This won't be annoying later. You can see this room is taking the heavily dithered approach. I suspect characters aren't for simple ease of animation.

Also, this map system is not intuitive. You have to press buttons without any idea that you're even getting anything. You don't even get a map if you don't find it, either. I had no map until now. Not sure if they would have fixed this or if this little tidbit of knowledge would be in the manual, but either way we're not getting squat.

Right, time to deal with that one zombie in the little hallway here. Once again, he only exists in his little corner of the world and...oh, I can't get away from him. I'm stuck in an endless loop.

I'm dead. This is making me feel a lot better about having infinite ammo when the enemies can just stunlock you. I try again, only to end up with Jill facing away from the zombie and she isn't turning around in time. Okay, if I don't clean out this room, I won't have a chance later on against the real threats. And I get him...once he gets stuck on the wall. This is a really bad sign. Which brings us to the next room. Yeugh...

The hallway with the dogs. They're going to jump out and I'm going to be screwed. How the hell can I even begin to fight something with completely superior speed and agility? The answer is...uh...we don't know yet. The dogs don't jump in through the window. It's possible they jumped in behind me and there was no sound effect, but once I made it around the corner I didn't really stop to check.

There are no zombies in the hallway past this...which isn't suspicious at all. Nor is there anything in the bathroom near here. Which makes me think they either didn't put as much in this game as they should have or they're intentionally gaslighting the player. Either way, I'm just going to be grateful when I have the shotgun or the grenade launcher.

Speaking of which, the shotgun should be an easy acquisition. Should be, we all should know how to get it quickly. There's nothing else in there, though the walkable areas for where Jill can go seem to be improperly done, so Jill sometimes seems like she's walking on air, considering what she can go on. The shotgun is still there, albeit very ugly. 

The cutscene where Barry gets you out of the trap is odd, you don't get to see the ceiling descend, it's just Jill yelling while Barry knocks from the outside. He...opens the door somehow and then Jill pops out of the area. Barry is nowhere to be seen. Well, I'm still not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

There's something odd about the shotgun. Besides the infinite ammo. Perhaps it's because I'm not using it from an optimal distance, or perhaps it's this version, but zombies are taking three shots from it to take out. In the PSX version, if I were ever using the shotgun against a zombie, I'd wait until he's close, but since that's suicide here, I'm using it from a distance.

I clear out the whole hallways, each zombie gets three or four shells. The sort of thing that would be horrifying if I weren't playing a game which was broken. So broken that sometimes the hostile AI doesn't activate, and the zombies just hang there, like actors who have missed their cue. Barry isn't back in the center of the hallway, but the doorway to Forest's corpse is open.
 

Curiously, there's a desk key here. Which should be the least of my troubles, but I guess certain items are being improperly loaded. Hopefully Chris won't have any trouble. Barry gives us Forest's grenade launcher, which for once doesn't have any ammo. Perhaps the game might have some balance to it after all. Yeah, right. 

 

As I make my way through to the western most hallway on the second floor, dropping the statue down to the dining room, I realize something about the way the game works. It's the pathfinding that's screwing over the zombies. Sometimes they just plain can't figure out how to get to you even when it should be obvious. Not going to complain. When I finally make my way down to the western safe room, I find out that the game doesn't check for ink ribbons when you save.

Since I picked up the chemicals from the east safe room I can use them on this plant thing in the fountain on the room at the far end of the central western hall on the first floor. Which works wonderfully, except that items seem to be missing here. There are two red herbs, but aren't there more here? Wasn't there an item here? After the game crashes and I have to do this entire corridor again, I find the Armor Key.

I double back to the room in the same corridor as the western safe room, because why not? I pick up a clip for no reason and then try the desk...which is locked...and Jill isn't just opening it. I grab the key from the item box, confirming the worst. Jill isn't quite working like she should. This nets me some shells, useful in case the shotgun suddenly runs dry.

I'm going to leave here, a lot of strange and unusual things are happening in this version and this is not quite what I was expecting. It's not just what I've said so far. Remember the red herbs? I tried to combine them with a green herb I had left over, doesn't do anything. Instead it functions as a flat full heal. Things are going to become very odd as things move along.

This Session: 1 hour 50 minutes