Happy 20th Anniversary, Resident Evil!




This month marks the 20th anniversary of Capcom's iconic survival horror video game franchise, Resident Evil (a.k.a. Biohazard). Through two decades worth of hit games, Resident Evil proved that zombies were just as much of a reliable staple for video games as they were for low-budget horror movies.

I didn't hop on the Resident Evil bandwagon when the franchise launched in the '90s. The promise of fighting off hordes of zombies, lizard people, giant spiders and other superfreaks just wasn't enough to overcome my aversion to the games' static camera angles and video clips that played every time players used stairs or opened a door. (Every. Damn. Time.)

I finally saw the light of Resident Evil's appeal through the two rail shooters were released for the Nintendo Wii, The Umbrella Chronicles and The Darkness Chronicles. Some devoted fans hated these games, but I thought that they were great for gamers like me who just wanted to see what the franchise was like and preferred the first-person, 3D format of game play. With those titles, newcomers could catch up on the characters and events of Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3 and the spin-off Code: Veronica just by playing through two games--that was a sweet deal! (Being able to use Gecko cheat codes for both of these games was a huge plus, too.)

Happy 20th anniversary, Resident Evil. May you continue to scare the bejesus out of gamers for 20 more years to come.



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