'Resident Evil HD Remaster' Arrives: Five Facts You May Not Know About The Franchise

Wednesday marked the launch of “Resident Evil HD,” a remastered edition of the 2002 GameCube title, which is a remake of the original 1996 game created for the Sony PlayStation and later ported to the Sega Saturn and PC. The updated HD graphics appear crystal-clear, and the game is now available for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC.

The original “Resident Evil” is one of the most iconic survival horror games in the genre, and in celebration of the HD release, here are five interesting facts about the franchise.

5. Dewey

There was an original roster of characters that didn’t make it into the game. One was Geizer, a large, muscular man with a cybernetic eye, and Dewey, a character with a sense of humor inspired by actor Eddie Murphy. Developers originally planned to make Dewey an unlockable character in the first game, but his character was scrapped.

4. A Game Boy Color version was cancelled.

Japanese developer Capcom planned a version for Nintendo's handheld console the Game Boy Color in 2000 after the 1996 success of the original game. Capcom asked U.K.-based HotGen Studios to develop the product, which was eventually rejected and never released. Capcom said it was “not confident that the product would have made consumers and Capcom happy.”

In early 2000, HotGen founder Fergus McGovern discussed the difficulties of fitting the entire “Resident Evil” game on the handheld device, calling it an “enormous game to attempt on the Game Boy.”

3. “Resident Evil” was supposed to be a first-person shooter.

The franchise forever altered the way we played survival horror games, but the classic third-person view present in nearly every “Resident Evil” game almost didn’t happen during development of the original game. When the title was in its creation stages, designers wanted to make it a first-person shooter. However, the director of the first game, Shinji Mikami, believed that technology just wasn’t up to par at the time, and Capcom went with the third-person viewpoint.

2. Raccoon City doesn’t really have a location.

Raccoon City, the location of the first t-Virus outbreak in 1998, isn’t set in a specific city, town or state. We know only that it’s seated somewhere in the U.S. Midwest and that it’s a small, industrialized town with a population over 100,000. The city’s economy is powered primarily by the Umbrella Corporation, and the town was destroyed at dawn on Thursday, Oct. 1, after an experimental non-nuclear missile impacted with the city to prevent a virus outbreak from spreading.

1. “Devil May Cry” was intended to be “Resident Evil 4.”

The 2001 action-adventure game “Devil May Cry” was originally planned to be “Resident Evil 4.” Production took more than five years due to a number of issues with development, but designers realized that their decision to alter the fixed-camera angle of the first three games in the franchise gave the title a different feel, which led to the first “Devil May Cry” game. “Resident Evil 4” reached the GameCube in North America and Japan in 2005 and became one of the most loved entries in the franchise.