Capcom says Resident Evil was initially in development for SNES
Had history taken a different direction, the first Resident Evil could have ended up as a very different game. Capcom’s Koji Oda told Game Informer that it was originally in development for the SNES.
Some of you may know that Resident Evil was inspired by the horror title Sweet Home, and was a spiritual successor of sorts. It makes sense then that it started off on the SNES. But as Oda mentioned, when the PlayStation came into the picture, Capcom shifted to that platform.
Oda told the magazine:
“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.”
“This was back before the name Resident Evil had even been assigned to it. The codename for this was literally just ‘horror game.’ On the SNES, we were working with limited hard drive space, so it’s not like we could dump a movie in there. If we had actually completed it on the SNES, I’m sure it would have been considerably different. For example, it was originally set in a place that had nothing to do with reality – more of a hellish place.”
