The Resident Evil franchise has a storied and well-documented history, but here’s something that you might not know: development on Capcom’s campy horror game originally began on the Super NES.
While visiting Capcom for our recent cover story on Mega Man 11, we chatted with director Koji Oda, who was originally hired to work at Capcom in 1991 on games like Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts and The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse.
“Honestly, I feel like I joined the game industry at the best time,” says Oda. “Typically, games would take half a year and no longer than a year to develop, so I feel like I was able to take part in a lot of different projects. It’s not that well known, but before Resident Evil went to the PlayStation, I was working on it for the Super NES.”
Resident Evil originally began development as a spiritual sequel to the NES horror game Sweet Home, which many consider to be the original survival horror game. However, when Sony’s PlayStation released in late 1994, it became a quick success, and Capcom’s management deiced to take advantage of the new console’s power.
Koji Oda—director of Mega Man 11—recently sat down to discuss the new game with Game Informer and let slip the interesting tidbit. Oda said that when he first started working at Capcom, he was hard at work on Resident Evil for the SNES. Here’s what he had to say about it:
Honestly, I feel like I joined the game industry at the best time. Typically, games would take half a year and no longer than a year to develop, so I feel like I was able to take part in a lot of different projects. It’s not that well known, but before Resident Evil went to the PlayStation, I was working on it for the Super NES.
Resident Evil originally began development as a spiritual sequel to the NES horror game Sweet Home, which many consider to be the original survival horror game. However, when Sony’s PlayStation released in late 1994, it became a quick success, and Capcom’s management deiced to take advantage of the new console’s power.
I think that it was best fit on the PSX and if it was going to debut on an Nintendo console first, I would have waited for the N64 or the Dolphin (Gamecube) announcements.
