Resident Evil 1 'demake' for SEGA Genesis/Megadrive

[Blake00]

Just when you think you've seen everything lol.. these Russian fellows have been working on a Resident Evil 1 game on the good old SEGA Genesis / Mega drive and it looks pretty awesome! Obviously not 3D but a very cool 2.5D isometric retro conversion of all the rooms, monsters, and characters. I tried out the demo on the Itch page and sadly its waaaaaaay older than the stuff they've been posting over the last few years. Hope they get it done before Capcom's lawyers see it lol.

https://pscd.itch.io/bio-evil

Recent test demo that looks insane!


Even the music conversions are awesome


Big fan preview showing lots of cool footage (Commentary not in English so I have no idea what's being said)


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[Citizen]

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

But why?

 

[Falksi]

This looks great! I'm not a big fan of the RE games at all but like the premise, so the change has me interested.

 

[Wassersäufer]

With great autism comes great responsibility.

 

[JDR13]

Hilarious that the demo has a framerate counter.

"Dude, my new rig gets a steady 60 fps in Bio Evil with everything maxed!"

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

I'm going to be honest, I think I'd like more demake nowadays. It could make better gameplay since they sometimes sacrified content and gameplay in order to have "state of the art graphics" which didn't necessarily aged well. (Not speaking specifically of RE1)

 

[Ol' Willy]

"state of the art graphics" which didn't necessarily aged well.

Good gameplay and writing > good graphics

Because of that

>>>>>>

 

[lightbane]

Imagine if these autist brains were repurposed to do a better work as brain computers. We would have unlimited processing power by now.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Look incredible, incomparably better than both NES and GBC demakes.

Reminds me Crusader: No Remorse / No Regret.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

This is pretty awesome.

Is it just running on 16bit hardware or are they also working with cartridge limitations? How are they going to fit this all on there?

Also, how is this legal, don't the get sued for copyright infringement or something?

 

[A horse of course]

Looks nothing like a Mega Drive game. The gameplay looks like the Square Enix ipad spinoffs for Deus Ex or Tomb Raider, whilst the cutscene looks like Alone in the Dark.

 

[†††]

Also, how is this legal, don't the get sued for copyright infringement or something?

Why? this is a brand new universe called BIO EVIL. Nothing to see here.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

More survival horror is something I can always get behind. I find that its very rare for a game in the genre to be disappointing.

Looks nothing like a Mega Drive game. The gameplay looks like the Square Enix ipad spinoffs for Deus Ex or Tomb Raider, whilst the cutscene looks like Alone in the Dark.

Does it though? While I don't know of more than a few isometric games on the MD, there is Haunting. Curiously, it seems like real Genesis game has a higher palette than the imitation one, wonder if there's a reason for that or just trickery.

 

[Blake00]

Hilarious that the demo has a framerate counter.

"Dude, my new rig gets a steady 60 fps in Bio Evil with everything maxed!"

lol I'm pretty sure I saw the creator post that he was using the old Gens Emulator which has a FPS counter cause back in the day when Gens came out people were trying to run emulators on pentium 1s etc lol.

This is pretty awesome.

Is it just running on 16bit hardware or are they also working with cartridge limitations? How are they going to fit this all on there?

Also, how is this legal, don't the get sued for copyright infringement or something?

Of course it's not legal. When did that ever matter to Russian modders and homebrewers haha.

I don't think any of their videos are from an actual mega drive with a capture card, sounds like they're all filmed using the good old Genesis/Megadrive emulator Gens which simulates mega drive hardware.

I haven't heard them complain or show fear about not being able to fit the game and some home made cutscenes. I asked them about it on their facebook page and they explained that they're using some sort of crazy compression technique on the cutscenes however it does result in stuttering as the poor old Mega Drive CPU struggles to unpack everything lol. Here's a video they recently showing the cutscene converted and compressed into the rom file and presumably playing in an emulator as I can see the FPS counter again. Note the stuttering.


I've seen them do test videos and talk about doing a Mega CD version of the game with converted original playstation music and sounds. If they did do that I wonder if they'd consider putting not so compressed cutscenes on the cd, or accessing the second CPU in the Mega CD for more processing power. God knows how hard all that is to do though as I haven't heard of any homebrew Mega CD projects out there, just Mega Drive ones.

.

 

[Ol' Willy]

whilst the cutscene looks like Alone in the Dark.

Considering that Resident Evil is the rip-off of Alone in the Dark... back to the roots, eh?

 

[Tacgnol]

whilst the cutscene looks like Alone in the Dark.

Considering that Resident Evil is the rip-off of Alone in the Dark... back to the roots, eh?

Funny thing is Capcom refused to acknowledge Alone in the Dark as an "inspiration" for years. Mikami finally admitted to it only a few years ago.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

whilst the cutscene looks like Alone in the Dark.

Considering that Resident Evil is the rip-off of Alone in the Dark... back to the roots, eh?

Funny thing is Capcom refused to acknowledge Alone in the Dark as an "inspiration" for years. Mikami finally admitted to it only a few years ago.

Problem is the people who consider RE1 something like fist surival horror ever lol.

Back in the day, when gaming press was top notch, there was a review of Resident Evil in Secret Service (cult polish mag) and it was like that: 'OK, is a nice game but it's just AittD clone from consoles, nice 3D models, bad low res background, console players may like it's nothing new for PC players who already know Alone in the Dark, 6/10' - straight in the face.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm going to be honest, I think I'd like more demake nowadays.

I'd love to see some neat de-makes, but to late 90s PC gaming type shit, not early Genesis console shit. Give me Fallout New Vegas in the Fallout 2 engine and then we'll talk.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Like, Shadow Warrior (2013) made in Build engine? Yeah!

Oh wait...

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I'm going to be honest, I think I'd like more demake nowadays.

I'd love to see some neat de-makes, but to late 90s PC gaming type shit, not early Genesis console shit. Give me Fallout New Vegas in the Fallout 2 engine and then we'll talk.

The problem there is that de-making things into Genesis/SNES/VGA DOS stuff, looks nice, everyone drops their jaw, but it doesn't matter when everyone forgets about it, because they don't come out. But when you demake it into late '90s PC gaming, you have the problem that it really isn't visually appealing. They either used low-res drawings or weird oddly round models. All those PSX-revival horror games would be a bit of a baseline for that, unfortunately, and people aren't screaming about how nice they look.

 

[DalekFlay]

The problem there is that de-making things into Genesis/SNES/VGA DOS stuff, looks nice, everyone drops their jaw, but it doesn't matter when everyone forgets about it, because they don't come out. But when you demake it into late '90s PC gaming, you have the problem that it really isn't visually appealing. They either used low-res drawings or weird oddly round models. All those PSX-revival horror games would be a bit of a baseline for that, unfortunately, and people aren't screaming about how nice they look.

I think stuff made in the style of that era but with less limitations can look really nice. Pillars of Eternity is a good example, whatever you think of the game or its art design. It goes for the Infinity Engine look, but at much higher resolution and with more effects and whatnot. There's lots of NES and SNES style indie games that actually use a lot of techniques and stuff that wouldn't be possible on those actual systems, but it homages them all the same. Amid Evil and Dusk would be others in the FPS genre.

None of these things are doable as a fan project though, so I'm talking out of my ass to some degree.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I think stuff made in the style of that era but with less limitations can look really nice. Pillars of Eternity is a good example, whatever you think of the game or its art design. It goes for the Infinity Engine look, but at much higher resolution and with more effects and whatnot. There's lots of NES and SNES style indie games that actually use a lot of techniques and stuff that wouldn't be possible on those actual systems, but it homages them all the same. Amid Evil and Dusk would be others in the FPS genre.

None of these things are doable as a fan project though, so I'm talking out of my ass to some degree.

I think what you want is not really a demake as much as the games in question to be done in a certain style. A demake would be F:NV built primarily off F2 assets, with new ones as needed, or more realistically, F:NV in the style of Strife. What you're suggesting would be really nice though, shame it'll never happen. (or be like all those shitty UE4 tech demo remakes of classic games...)

 

[Great Deceiver]

whilst the cutscene looks like Alone in the Dark.

Considering that Resident Evil is the rip-off of Alone in the Dark... back to the roots, eh?

Funny thing is Capcom refused to acknowledge Alone in the Dark as an "inspiration" for years. Mikami finally admitted to it only a few years ago.

Alone in the Dark is undoubtedly their visual inspiration, but in terms of gameplay Resident Evil also owes much more to Sweet Home:


edited for retardation

 

[JDR13]

I think demakes are cool just to see what X game might have looked like if it had been made a decade earlier, but I don't have much desire to actually play them.