We recently asked you Nintendo Life readers to rate your favourite Game Boy Color games, and as we're preparing to publish the Top 50 results, we're taking a look back at a handful of our favourite GBC games. Here, Kerry defends the Resident Evil game that NL readers voted the worst in the series...
A long time ago we were promised a mostly-authentic port of the survival horror classic Resident Evil for the Game Boy Color — tension-ratcheting camera angles and all — only to end up with Barry “You were almost a Jill sandwich!” Burton on a boat. Resident Evil Gaiden was seen (and still is) as something of a black sheep to fans of the series and the wider survival horror genre alike. And as if to add insult to injury, this story never happened — not in an official way that goes beyond the fun and fuzzily fitted-in alternative events and politely ignored embellishments present in the series’ many side games. This is the one game in the entire series that’s definitively ended up in the canonical bin.
So the truth is this game’s awful, unwanted, and (canonically speaking) didn’t actually happen, right? Wrong.
The truth is the game never had a chance.
Gaiden released in Europe in December 2001 after years of Capcom teasing another game that, at least in concept, everyone was excited for: the mythical 'Resident Evil GB'. Porting one of the biggest blockbusters of its generation to the only handheld that mattered should have been like turning on the money-hose and aiming it directly at Capcom’s bank account. And it would have been, if it had worked. To quote the Capcom representative who broke the sad news of its eventual cancellation: "We were not confident that the product would have made both consumers and Capcom happy".
Which brings us back to Gaiden: It doesn’t matter that it was a different pitch at a different time by a different team, the unlucky game was only ever going to be viewed as a make-do consolation prize after all the wild ambition shown by a game that was deemed not good enough to be worth finishing. That alone would have been a big enough problem for Gaiden but the worst was still to come — Gaiden debuted in the US and Japan not long after Resident Evil’s now-legendary GameCube remake redefined the entire genre, and appeared on shop shelves in Europe at a time when every magazine was filled with page after page of excitable previews on Capcom’s pre-rendered masterpiece.
Some Resident Evil sequels are… let’s say “divisive”. Some are very good. Some are incredible. But they would all struggle to steal the spotlight away from Mikami’s original shadow-soaked Spencer Mansion, and to expect Gaiden to perform well under those circumstances is at best unrealistic and unfair.
So, it’s not the Game Boy Resident Evil game everyone was excited for, and it released around the same time as one of the undisputed high points not only for the series but the survival horror genre as a whole.
None of that makes Gaiden a bad game, though, just an unlucky one.
The location is as Resident Evil as it gets: The luxury ocean liner Starlight is a self-contained inescapable nightmare, a stark contrast between the destroyed opulence of a grand hall above and the harsh metal and inherent danger of the machinery working away below giving your primary location plenty of variety (and locked doors) while still feeling like different parts of one cohesive whole. And if the story had been followed up, it would have taken the entire series in an interesting new direction: setting Barry up as the series’ designated dad of all mysterious young girls with unknown powers almost fifteen years before Resident Evil: Revelations 2 did, and — most shockingly of all — killing Leon off and secretly replacing him with a shapeshifting green-blooded bioweapon.
And if the story had been followed up, it would have taken the entire series in an interesting new direction: setting Barry up as the series’ designated dad and — most shockingly of all — killing Leon off and secretly replacing him with a shapeshifting green-blooded bioweapon.
Ridiculous? No more so than Leon suplexing Ganado in Resident Evil 4 or the giant vampire lady and her insect-based children in Village. Gaiden makes a real effort to sell the mood, too, with big events often accompanied by full screen cutscene art and every pixelled room decorated with upturned tables, broken floorboards, and shattered mirrors. Remarkably for the hardware, even the sound contributes to the unsettling atmosphere, and as you run around gathering keycards and weapons the ominous music will seamlessly shift between a more passive and active tones depending on how close you are to danger, and zombies give out impressively clear sampled groans when they’re about to lunge for one of our two playable heroes out of the shadows.
Equal care and effort was lavished on the battle system, which reinterprets the panicked misfires and intimidating hordes found in earlier titles into all new first-person action sequences years before “Resident Evil in first-person” was considered an inventive and daring direction for the series. These real-time battles even accurately reflect the circumstances Barry and Leon encountered them in — pick a fight with two close-up male zombies while one female zombie is further away on the screen and that’s exactly what’ll show up in battle, Gaiden’s stunning spritework even taking the time to show any zombies caught unawares slowly turning to face you before they shamble forward until their constantly animated corpse almost fills the entire window.
There’s real tactical play at work behind these best-in-class graphics, too, as distance plays a huge part in how effective your weapons are — and how dangerous those mutated monsters are too. A shotgun isn’t going to do a great deal to an enemy right at the back of the room, and that knife you’re currently brandishing in an attempt to conserve ammo isn’t going to hit anything at all until the zombie’s already close enough to tear out a chunk of flesh with its teeth.
Is Resident Evil Gaiden flawed? Of course it is. The rather strange save system neither reflects the nail biting “Should I play it safe or should I push on?” decisions found in the limited ink ribbons of old and isn’t convenient for on-the-go gaming, either. Being able to look at — but not take — ammo for weapons you haven’t found yet makes you feel like you’re on the receiving end of some programmer’s bad mood. The endlessly respawning enemies frequently threaten to upset the already delicate balance between survival and frustration.
But even so, the strength of the criticism often levelled at the game is rarely proportional to Gaiden’s actual issues, and all the good in there — and there is good in there — is too quickly brushed aside in favour of a cheap jab at a game that not only made a real creative effort to bring survival horror to hardware unsuited to the task but also released in hostile conditions that were completely out of the developer’s control. In reality, Gaiden’s got some clever ideas marred by occasionally iffy execution, which makes it no different from the vast majority of other games in existence.
Would you give this GBC game a go if Capcom reanimated it somehow? Did you play it at the time? Let us know in the comments below!
And don't forget you can rate your favourite Game Boy Color games and help us build our reader-ranked Top 50 GBC games, to be revealed soon. And if you want to lust over some lovely colour variants of the GBC hardware, feel free to let us know your favourite Game Boy Color hue, too.
Comments 29
I have Gaiden and it's alright. My biggest issue with it was how easy it was to run into zombies, either hidden by foreground elements or the screen being so dark, which then quickly drained your resources.
Since this is a video game and not something actually important, you're entitled to your opinion. In my case, I played this game to completion and ABSOLUTELY HATED IT.
That was close Nintendo life. You nearly became a Reggie sandwich!
I mean it gets old fast with all the “quick time events” I love the bit art it’s pretty cool. But yeah games not great, also the story teases at something cool, then calls you out as twisted for thinking that way 😂
After reading this I casually looked up how much a legit copy is going for these day. Crikey! 👀
Alone in the dark for the game boy colour now that is crazy good!
Story is good got me involved , gameplay awful 🤢
yes i finished it full
I bought this back in 1999/2000
It’s really not a very good game
I got this game brand new back in the day for a birthday if I remember correctly. I absolutely loved it! This was my first RE experience and I was excited to step into this zombie horror! It was RE on the go wherever and whenever I wanted! Anyone who belittled this game should prepare to face my wrath. This game is easily a 10!
@Zebetite 'Since this is a video game and not something actually important, you're entitled to your opinion'
So your saying if it WAS something important... she wouldn't be?
Anyway, I know you didn't mean that... I'm just playing since it sounded funny
Resident Evil Gaiden deserves a remake.
It's kind of like the original Final Fantasy II. The ambition and creativity employed should absolutely be appreciated and remembered. But actually playing the game? Hard nah.
It also probably didn't help that Alone in the Dark on the same console blew people away.
@LaytonPuzzle27 It would be great if publishers remade games that were merely OK originally to give them a new, better chance. But it's risky money and the only people who do this seem to be those who simply don't have good games in their catalogues.
@dartmonkey Glad I have a CIB copy then. 😅 The game was decent in its own right.
Yeah, but what about the Tiger 99X Games Resident Evil 2?
@TossedLlama Those aren't stickers, that's my Monster Hunter Rise edition Switch!
I still have my GB cart for this game, it's loose but it's still worth a hell of a lot 👍👍very niche game that a lot of RE fans don't talk about often
@dartmonkey Cha Ching! 🤑😁🤑😁🤑
Ah and there I thought I had been the only person that enjoyed this one.
I'm not really into the series but have enough awareness to know that if I wanted to give it a go I'd play the remakes of 1 & 2, maybe the third, any of the versions of 4, and the last two main entries. They're all polished enough that there's not much need to be playing a GBC entry from more than 20 years ago where the best you can say of it is "it wasn't THAT bad" or "it had some good bits".
Was always impressed that they even attempted this even if it’s not the best of games.
I played this a couple years ago, I was enjoying it, but towards the end, a lot of bugs started popping up, and it got quite irritating. I don't remember if I was able to finish the game or not.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Resident-Evil-Gaiden-Game-Boy-Color-GBC-Boxed-Sealed-SEALED-CAPCOM-ULTRA-RARE-/224474404539?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286
Holy crap! 😳😳😳 The price on that lol
I recently played it and the only thing I liked about it was the battle system. It reminded me a bit of one of Undertale's battles. I couldn't get past the hideous, dated graphics, though. I like retro gaming, but it has to be at least 16-bit and up.
I brought this day of launch back in the day and even for it’s time it’s sucks lol, hard to say anything good about this game lol
Pretty good for a GBC game.
@DannyBoi "Kerry, you saved me!"
"Yah."
@Eel there are dozens of us!
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