Hey there,
I was going to do an article on the entire series but I had so much to say about the first one that it's spawned into an article on the sole game.
I've been a huge fan of Resident Evil since I saw the original game, around 1998, two years after its release. I was shit scared of the game, when I watched a good friend of mine, who was the same age, that would have made us nine. Ever since then, I've played every game in the main series, and played some spin-offs too. The games have had their pros and cons, and their ups and downs in popularity. But I can't help but love Capcom's survival horror series. I'll go through my favourite moments from the one that started them all, Resident Evil 1, and hope you can reminisce with me if you're as big a fan as I am.
1. The title sequence.
You're the camera and you're creeping up on a survivor, he turns around, screams at you, and a gush of blood hits the air. The Resi logo hits the screen in big red letters. You then choose to click "New Game" and a man in a deep sinister voice says "Resident Evil". The man saying "Resident Evil" when you click "New Game" has been used in pretty much every game since, it's that iconic.
This sequence is so cheesy but it's brilliant. It sets up the game brilliantly, with the cheese and the bad acting. I love Resi 1, but this is just the beginning, there's many more things to say about this game that I like.
2. The intro video.
The entire intro video is infamous. It's awful, brutally awful in its acting, it's hilarious. If you haven't seen the epic parody by Legendary Frog you can view it here. "No, don't go!" Man, I love the intro video, it's fantastic.
3. Barry finds the "blood".
Barry: "What! What is this?" (Jill and Barry inspect closer) Jill: "...what is it?" Barry "Blood."
I love this little scene, I love Barry, who by the time he actually says blood, has been looking at the floor stained in some mysterious red substance for about 10 seconds. It's awfully awesome.
4. Barry, the master of weaponry, has to use three magnum bullets to shoot a zombies head off.
Says it all really, it takes you on pretty much every Resi game, one magnum bullet to a zombies head to pop it off. Barry, the veteran gunman, uses three. How?!
5. The master unlocking.
Considered the worst line in video game history, Barry gives Jill a lockpick. Jill is apparently the master of unlocking. If she was, surely you'd expect her to have one in the first place? And she is the master of unlocking, she has since unlocked my heart. Aww.
6. A picture of a chubby woman.
A subtle yet very memorable moment for me playing this game as a kid was when you go through the blue double doors on the first floor, and a picture hangs directly on the opposite wall that describes the portrait as such. I, to this day, never understood why there was such a need to describe the picture as chubby? The woman wasn't even that big, I could see that despite the few pixels needed to make the damn thing! It's just insulting really.
7. The dogs smashing through the windows in the first floor corridor.
Finally, a non-piss-taking memory. I shat myself when I was a nine year old kid when I saw this scene. The first dog smashing through the glass was a heart stopper, I tried to take him out, failed miserably, then ran off again. I then saw the second one come through, and shat myself yet again. Great times. Oh, I died by the way, the first time anyway.
8. Jill Sandwich.
Aw, come on, it's singly the best scene in Resi history surely! It's so good, they kept it in the remake, just made it slightly less cheesy, and had a shop named after the scene in the first Dead Rising game (Jill's Sandwiches).
9. I have this!
Barry shows off his fantastic magnum, the same one that he used three bullets to take down one zombie with. He prefers his magnum to the Acid Rounds he gives Jill. To be fair, I'd choose the magnum over Acid Rounds too.
10. Perhaps that was the most important part.
Barry is possibly the best one liner character in the history of video gaming. He's just got the best and cheesiest quotes from this game. When Jill inspects a book with pages missing, she lets Sir Burton know about the situation. Then, he responds with the above. It's just a fantastic moment where you're thinking, "Did they seriously employ these people as voice actors? Or is it the lines in the first place that are just stupid?"
11. Meeting Richard.
Richard's acting is god awful. The actor says his lines with little problems, despite Richard having a humongous snake bite around half his chest, and then finishes with "Ouch!". It's comedy gold, it really is.
12. Meeting the Snake.
This is a piss pants moment, the music is great too. This snake was the bane of my life at one moment, when I wanted to avoid getting any snake bite to cut time. He's a really scary beast and if he kills you, he trys to eat you whole, and nests in his long body with your lower half. Great stuff.
13. Chris "inspects" Plant 42.
When you're Chris in Resi 1, depending on what you do, there's a chance that for some unknown reason, when you walk into the room where you go against Plant 42 a cutscene occurs where Chris sees the humongous plantified beast. Unlike what everyone else would do in the scenario where you see this huge fucking plant, Chris just looks at it, walks around it for a bit, inspecting it, before it uses one of its tentacles to grab him. Rendering him useless before he has to actually depend on Rebecca to make a solution to release its hold. I mean WTF?! "Oooh... huge plant... that's amazing... let me get my mobile ph... aaaarrrghhhh!!!"
14. Wesker shooting wasp nests with a handgun.
I mean come on? Who put that in the script?! My favourite part is at the end of the scene when you have the opportunity to just walk over them. I always try to do it as dramatically as possible. No wonder Wesker had to resort to superhuman powers if he uses a handgun to shoot fucking wasp nests!
15. The now infamous Hunter FMV scene.
Yes it looks rubbish now, but I'm telling you, playing this back in the mid to late nineties, you shat yourself. You didn't know what was running after you, at a great speed, capable of opening doors, having green reptilian claws. To this day, I'm scared of Hunters in the original Resi game. They haven't been replicated in difficulty and fucked up scariness, not even the remake did them justice. The only hope? Is when you get...
16. The Colt Python! The weapon brought down from the gods!
Playing the game at the time I didn't really use the weapon as it only held 6 rounds and looked small (I have very little knowledge on guns and how powerful they compare). But when I gave it a go, that was it, I was invincible! I could kill Hunters with one shot if luck was on my side! That is, unless...
17. The Hunter claws off my head.
Yarp. If there's one thing you don't do in Resi 1, or many Resi games for that matter, is get yourself in a fight with a Hunter if your on "Caution" or "Danger" health. They'll just claw your head off. But, it doesn't stop you thinking "Well, one more shot with this colt python/shotgun and he'll go down", you mistime and he claws your head off, in half a second. Just hope you saved recently if you do take the stupid risks that many people took.
18. Meeting Tyrant/Wesker reveals his true motives.
Yes I am aware I skipped a big chunk of the game but in honesty the majority of the good stuff is in the first half of the game. As a kid, I was pretty surprised about Wesker's double crossing, but that's only because I was a kid. It was pretty damn obvious from early on that Wesker was behind everything. But his dialogue, and revealing Tyrant, are still great moments in the game. Tyrant was pretty bad ass looking, so cool that his model was used over and over again in the first 4 games (1 to Code Veronica). Going against Tyrant the second time is also a great moment, he really does skin you to death if you're not careful. I remember my heart pumping going against him all those years ago.
So there you go, I hope you reminisced with me over the great moments in the game. Is there anything I've missed out, or not thought of? Is there little subtle things in the game you want to add from your experience? Do you have any stories about this epic game? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading.
Date: 20/12/10
barry for prime minister!!
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