Resident Evil Zero

• 1. Introduction

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  Resident Evil Zero begins on the 23rd of July 1998, aboard a train called the Ecliptic Express. The train belongs to the pharmaceutical company Umbrella, and a swarm of leeches is tearing through its passengers and crew. On a nearby hillside, a mysterious young man simply watches. That scene opens a 2002 survival horror game that Capcom made for the GameCube. It is a prequel to the original Resident Evil of 1996, and it carries two stranger stories inside it. The first is about a game that outgrew the console it was first built for. The second is about the watcher on the hillside, and what he wants from Umbrella.

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• 2. Cartridge Trouble

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  Shortly after the 64DD peripheral for the Nintendo 64 was announced in 1995, Capcom began to imagine a prequel. The original Resident Evil was still in production at the time. Four years later the 64DD had sold poorly, so Capcom built the prequel for a plain cartridge instead. Work on that Nintendo 64 version started in mid-1998, alongside many other Resident Evil projects.

  A Nintendo 64 cartridge held only 64MB of data, one tenth of a traditional CD-ROM. Meanwhile Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, released in 2000, was taking full advantage of the GD-ROM format. The Zero team had to work from the opposite direction. They designed the gameplay and visuals to fit scarce space.

  The cartridge did offer one gift, which was almost no load times. Capcom built a real-time system called partner zapping around that strength, letting players hop between two characters instantly. Disc-based games on the PlayStation could not do this.

  The prototype was full of experiments. To make one-on-one zombie fights tenser, the team tried giving zombies different reactions when shot. They also let players counter-attack when bitten. They toyed with faster zombies, a forerunner of the crimson head enemies that later appeared in the series. The prototype even supported local cooperative play.

  Yoshiki Okamoto, president of Capcom's screenplay company Flagship, revealed the Nintendo 64 project after the script was finished in early 1999. In January 2000 the game was officially announced at 20 percent completion. A playable demo followed at Tokyo Game Show. Release was expected in July 2000, and reports said the mood echoed the first game, favoring suspense over the action of Resident Evil 2 from 1998. Then it became clear that the data would not fit on a single cartridge.

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• 3. Starting Over on GameCube

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  In September 2000, Capcom confirmed that Resident Evil Zero was moving to the newly announced GameCube. Only the concept and the story survived the move. Every piece of data had to be built again.

  Capcom Production Studio 3 developed the final version, with additional support from the company Tose. The switch delayed the game, which gave the team time to upgrade the environments. The larger memory allowed more CGI videos, and the voice acting was recorded again.

  The GameCube used optical discs, and discs brought load times back. Programmers had to rely on sophisticated programming to keep partner zapping working. The feature that justified the original Nintendo 64 design now had to be rescued.

  Recordings of cooking hamburgers supplied the iconic sounds of the leeches. The modelers had a different kind of reference. They were given realistic-looking airsoft guns to base their gun designs on. Their copies were so faithful that the early models carried replica markings and gas refill inlets. Nobody on the team noticed until halfway through development.

  Capcom announced its intention to release a game demo in Japan around August 2002.

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• 4. Two Heroes, One Party

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  Rebecca Chambers, a police officer and medic, carries a mixing kit that lets her combine herbs and other chemicals. Her weakness is defense. Billy Coen, a convicted former Force Reconnaissance Officer, has the opposite profile. He can move heavy objects, use a lighter, and take more punishment. But he cannot mix herbs, an ability that is a staple of the series.

  When the two travel together, the player controls either one while the game's artificial intelligence handles the other. The player can also control both at once, or split them up to explore separately. Close together, they can trade items. The partner system sits at the center of many of the game's puzzles.

  Sweet Home, a game from 1989, shaped the other big change. The team wanted a harder experience, so they removed the item boxes that earlier games placed at fixed locations. Players now drop items on the floor, which frees inventory space until they pick them up again. The map marks where dropped items lie, and each room limits how many can be left behind.

  Both characters can run and make quick 180-degree turns to escape danger. Objects can be examined, pushed, or climbed to reach higher levels. Items can be equipped, or combined into stronger items and fresh ammunition.

  Critics would later split sharply over the item-dropping rule in particular.

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• 5. Scrapped Fates

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  Billy Coen was due to be executed for killing 23 people when the military police van carrying him crashed in the Arklay Mountains. Rebecca arrives in the same region on a different path. Her unit, Bravo Team of S.T.A.R.S., was sent to investigate cannibalistic murders, and its helicopter suffered an engine failure and crash-landed in a forest.

  The prototype imagined a harsher story. Either Rebecca or Billy could die while the other survived and finished the game. The team scrapped the idea, because Rebecca's death would ruin the canon of the Resident Evil timeline.

  Billy was also first designed as a more ambiguous character, who might become friend or foe as events unfolded. That idea was dropped too. Scenario writer Noboru Sugimura was called back to make changes to the story.

  The character designs shifted as well. Rebecca lost her beret and shoulder pads, and Billy received a new hairstyle.

  The version that shipped keeps both heroes alive, which leaves one question. Who built the nightmare they have to escape?

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• 6. The Queen Leech's Revenge

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  Dr. James Marcus, co-founder of Umbrella and former director of its training facility for future executives, discovered the so-called Progenitor virus in the 1960s. He chose to study its potential as a biological weapon. By combining it with leech DNA, he developed the T-virus, which causes rapid mutations and turns humans and animals into zombies and monsters.

  In 1988, Marcus was assassinated on the orders of Umbrella's other co-founder, Oswell E. Spencer, who wanted his research. After the corpse was dumped, the Queen Leech, Marcus's final experiment, entered the body and reanimated it. It gained his memories and the ability to shapeshift. It believed itself to be the resurrected Marcus. As revenge on Umbrella, it orchestrated the outbreak in the facility and on the train.

  Two Umbrella soldiers, acting on the orders of Albert Wesker and William Birkin, tried to seize the train and destroy it. Leeches killed them first. Rebecca and Billy then applied the brakes and steered the runaway train away from the abandoned facility.

  Inside, Wesker decides to leave Umbrella and join its rival, planning further research on the T-virus. Birkin refuses his offer and completes his work on the G-virus instead. Rebecca meanwhile becomes separated from Billy and meets Captain Enrico Marini. He tells her that the rest of Bravo Team will gather at an old mansion they have found, and he lets her stay behind to look for Billy. Right after he leaves, the Tyrant attacks her. She and Billy reunite and defeat it together, then continue toward a water plant.

  They finally catch up with the leech-controlling man. Birkin trips the facility's self-destruct mechanism just as they try to escape by lift. Pursued by the Queen Leech, the pair kill it and get out before the facility is destroyed. Rebecca promises that her police report will list Billy as another casualty of the incident. Billy thanks her for his freedom and leaves. Rebecca heads for the mansion, where the first Resident Evil begins.

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• 7. Reviews and Rules

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  On the 12th of November 2002, Resident Evil Zero reached North America. Japan followed on the 21st of November 2002, and Europe on the 7th of March 2003. Reviews were generally positive.

  The graphics and atmosphere drew nearly universal praise, with descriptions such as wonderfully spooky and moody, and an astonishing level of detail. Scott Steinberg of GameSpy singled out animated backgrounds like flickering lights and dripping water. Giancarlo Varanini of GameSpot admired how the models blended with the pre-rendered backgrounds. Matt Casamassina of IGN wrote that "Capcom uses silence at times, too, to scare, which is brilliant." Louis Bedigian of GameZone praised thunder, gunshots, and footsteps for building a scary world.

  The controls were panned as archaic. Reviewers faulted the series for not evolving toward something closer to Devil May Cry from 2001 or Eternal Darkness from 2002.

  The new item system divided critics. A GameRevolution reviewer liked that it ended trips back to item boxes, but noted extra backtracking to retrieve dropped items. Mark MacDonald of 1UP.com praised it for removing backtracking altogether. Varanini gave Capcom credit for trying, but found it of little use, since dropping everything in a save location was easiest. Casamassina called it perfect.

  The partner system split opinion as well. Varanini said it works well, though he found the puzzles too simple and the companion's AI lacking at times. Bedigian said it added a new dimension and left him excited for future games. Steinberg enjoyed puzzles that needed both characters, but felt he was "babysitting" his partner in fights.

  GameSpot nominated the game among GameCube titles for Best Action Adventure Game, Best Sound, Best Story, Best Graphics (Technical), and Best Graphics (Artistic).

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• 8. Second Lives

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  In December 2008, Capcom ported the game to the Wii as Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil Zero, released alongside the 2002 remake of Resident Evil. It was near-identical to the original and supported both the Wii Remote and the GameCube controller. Critics faulted it for not fully using motion control, since it leaned mostly on the Classic Controller and the remote-and-nunchuk combination.

  The lost Nintendo 64 prototype had a quieter afterlife. For many years its fate was unclear, and all that remained was low-quality video from Tokyo Game Show in 2000 and magazine scans. In 2015, while marketing the remaster, Capcom showed new high-quality footage of it. The prototype remains unreleased.

  Capcom announced the high-definition remaster on the 26th of May 2015. Producer Tsukasa Takenaka was inspired by the success of the Resident Evil remaster, and he knew many fans preferred the older style of play from before Resident Evil 4. Director Koji Oda returned with many members of the original team, which Takenaka said protected Oda's original vision.

  Takenaka was surprised to find that the original 2002 models and textures had been built in very high quality and then scaled down. Some assets had to be redone, because items that were deliberately blurry, such as posters and signs, now looked clear and made no sense in context. Backgrounds were re-captured, and effects like fire were turned into 3D effects. New options included an easy mode, 5.1 surround sound, a choice of 4:3 or 16:9 video, and a modern control scheme without tank controls. Wesker mode lets the player control Albert Wesker in place of Billy, with quick movement and special attacks. Takenaka found this remaster harder than the first, largely because of the companion function.

  The remaster arrived on the 19th of January 2016. The Resident Evil Origins Collection, bundling it with the Resident Evil remaster, followed on the 22nd of January 2016. The Nintendo Switch version came on the 21st of May 2019. Critics were impressed by the sharper visuals but felt the game kept the original's problems. Peter Brown of GameSpot enjoyed Wesker mode and wrote that the game still "bears the hallmarks that made the original Resident Evil enjoyable."

  The GameCube version sold 1.25 million copies, and the remaster had sold 2.8 million units as of December 2020. Across all platforms, the game has sold over 4 million copies. S. D. Perry novelized the story as Resident Evil: Zero Hour, published by Pocket Books on the 24th of October 2004.

  On the 1st of July 2023, fans from El Rincón del Lobezno and a coding group called Biohazard España released an unofficial demake. It modded Resident Evil 2 to recreate the opening train section in a 45 minute demo. Its one save room holds two green herbs and a typewriter that cannot be used. Players hold R1 and press Square to switch between Billy and Rebecca.

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