Back to Review Index

Resident Evil Gaiden

The stats

Resident Evil Gaiden start screen. What a happy looking guy

It would seem like an odd choice. Porting a 32-bit game to an 8-bit system? That was where Capcom were in the early 2000s - attempting to port Saturn and PlayStation classic Resident Evil to a platform with the same CPU as a ZX Spectrum. You can find that prototype if you like, and give it a go - it's an interesting curio! And considering the install base of the Game Boy, and the Game Boy Colour, it made financial sense to try. Capcom went a different route though - the Gaiden, or "Side Story" route. Was it a good route? Let's see!

Resident Evil Gaiden makes a great first impression - using the extra grunt of the Game Boy Color (it's not compatible with the original green screen wonder) the game introduces itself with lovely pixel art story screens. Set on the cruise ship Starlight, Resident Evil 1 alum Barry Burton is tasked with finding not just a new B.O.W. created by Umbrella, but everybody's favourite fop haired former cop, Leon Scott Kennedy. As soon as the game starts I'm struck by how similar it looks to another GBC classic, Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel (say that five times fast).

Resident Evil Gaiden start screen. What a happy looking guy

It's a fullscreen experience, with Barry's sprite looming large and the various zombies you encounter visible too - there's a reason for this, which I'll get to. At times full screen cutscenes jump in to give the player updates from head office, or showcase rooms and character interactions. The art style for these cutscenes is great use of pixel art and the Game Boy Colour's capabilities, and I always looked forward to seeing them. But the main cycle of the game is running around the cruise ship fighting - or avoiding - the ravenous undead.

This is both a pro and a con of Resident Evil Gaiden - you can see the enemies on screen and choose to engage or not - it would've been easy to go the RPG random battle route and have zombies jump you from nowhere (to save resources) but instead you can see the zombies, you can see what type they are, and you can choose to engage or not. Problem is, that decision isn't always in your hands, as attempts to dodge - at least for me - would often be stymied and then you're in a fight. It's a key gameplay mechanic of Resident Evil that you can choose to fight or to preserve your resources, and to be perfectly honest if you've watched my streams you'd know I'm TERRIBLE at dodging in all flavours of Resi, but the positioning and response of some of the enemies felt unfair in this game.

On the plus side, fighting zombies is fun. You are taken to a kind of JRPG battle interface, with some awesome enemy art up top and your characters/weapons below. The enemies look different when further away or up close, and their positioning impacts what weapon you can use (can't knife them from far away, sadly). The actual attacks are a rhythm test where you try and hit a spot on a horizontally scrolling bar. The spot size changes based on the weapon selected, and battles can get quite tense when there's multiple enemies looking to chomp on you. Sadly you don't get the satsifaction of a shotgun head pop or a giant rocket explosion, but the different weapons at least show some differences rather than multiple different variations on the "splat" graphic. And the music! It does get a bit repetitive but the battle tune is a bop somehow, which you wouldn't necesarily expect.

The music for the rest of the game goes for the more atmospheric route, and as long as you're a fan of chiptunes you'll be comfortable with what's on offer. No voices of course, but plenty of grunts, bangs and flames fill out the sound effects.

The way the game plays out is where things drag down a bit. There are multiple characters which is great to see, providing some opportunities for dialogue and cutscenes with a plot that attempts to throw some twists in here and there. However those plot beats can be far apart - you won't find any clock or gem puzzles here, everything is "get thing to open door" which most of the time is keys, but can also include other items. Problem is they can be at opposite ends of the ship, with multiple pitfalls and enemies to dodge each time. While you can attempt to clear an area, as the story progresses areas enemies get reset or re-added with harder variants to keep you on your toes.

At times it's also unclear exactly what you're meant to do, which isn't an unfamiliar feeling in Resident Evil, but when coupled with the other frustrations of lots of backtracking and hard to avoid enemies, can get real annoying real fast. And while you should expect to not be able to kill everything, the game does at times feel incredibly stingy with ammo. I can only guess that the idea was to use the knife a lot more, but when dealing with bosses the knife is not going to help you. Even GameFAQs encourage the usage of an exploit to get plenty of ammo before the final battle.