Scrapped 'Resident Evil 1.5' Teased Yet Again By Collectors
September 8, 2011 10:00 AM | Danny Cowan
Capcom had no idea of what kind of monster it created when it made the famous decision to halt Resident Evil 2's development and start again from scratch. While Resident Evil 2 would eventually be released to critical acclaim, the beta version, dubbed "Resident Evil 1.5" by fans, remains a sought-after rarity.
Precious few beta copies of "Resident Evil 1.5" remain in the hands of collectors, and despite repeated attempts to purchase prototype discs, series fans have always met with disappointment. Instead, they're at the mercy of a slow trickle of screenshots, brief video snippets, and, uh, filesystem brags.
The latest tease is this fan-made trailer for Capcom's upcoming HD remakes of Resident Evil 4 and Code Veronica. It's a bizarre approach, to say the least. The fact that the trailer spends so much time lingering on trite prose and offers so little footage from the legendary game is pretty irksome, though I suppose that's the author's intent.
Still, at least you get to see a few seconds of beta character Elza Walker in action, so that's something, I suppose?
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2 Comments
By following Hideki Kamiya on Twitter (PJ_Kamiya), you start to piece together that the team behind RE1.5 would want nothing more than for the world to forget the game ever existed. From a developer's point of view, it's very disappointing to spend so much time on a game to have it scrapped due to a disappointing experience, an experience they were excited to create when as the project began. All the decisions they made as they developed the game were basically proven wrong at the end. So it must be hard to see the failed version come back and haunt them over and over again, reminding them of their inexperienced decisions.
I sometimes assume the draw of RE1.5 is basically the hole Capcom hasn't been able to fill by its decision to completely abandoning the style of gameplay the first 3 RE's had, in favor of the more action-oriented design. Had they kept both designs alive, I'm sure most wouldn't care about a version that even the minds at Capcom themselves didn't like.
Cronotriggers | September 8, 2011 10:47 AM
The proper response to this kind of release behavior is to just start ignoring it. The people trickling information are just after the ego boost from the attention they get.
Baines | September 8, 2011 1:23 PM