Seems like Capcom had some kind of outreach program where they gave the games out to supported living facilities all around the world.

Mostly nobody had played sweet home or alone in the dark so RE got the spotlight.

>>11822757 (OP)
Playstation

The zombie horror genre had more or less faded into obscurity.
So its return felt genuinely fresh, no pun intended.
At the same time, violence was becoming a major trend in the early 90s gaming, just look at Mortal Kombat, Doom and so on.
Resident Evil manage to release at the perfect time.
Also its gameplay was engaging and carried a certain arcade-style appeal that resonated pretty well with high-score arcade enthusiasts and plot fags also liked the spooky atmosphere and mystery.

First horror game with good graphics

You ask too many questions, why don't you play the damn game and find out?

>>11822757 (OP)
It premiered on the Playstation. That's literally it. If it released on N64 exclusively it would have gone nowhere, see; Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day.

>>11822757 (OP)
>What made Resident Evil a worldwide phenomenon?
90s Print mags did. They loved Resident Evil dearly. They only people who hated Resident Evil were the brainlets who died 30 minutes in because they've wasted all their resources. In the end the brainlets won. Now every RE title is catering to them. Because stupid people is where the money is.

>>11822757 (OP)
For the average player, it was one of the first mainstream game that really felt like playing a movie, and not in the "Sega CD FMV game" kind of way.

For the average player it was also the first time a video game could make them feel horror. Again, not saying horror games didn't exist, just saying they weren't mainstream.

So for most it felt like a revolution on both counts while also having great gameplay and replay value

I also think the balance changes that made the game harder in the west were a major part of the game's success. It needed to be harder to tie in atmosphere with the gameplay, something the JPN RE1 and 2 didn't really have. This is why there are Japanese "RE clones" like Deep Fear which hand out infinite ammo, they just didn't get that aspect, while western "RE clones" like AitD4 can be super tight on supplies.

>>11823936
>Classic Resident Evil
>Rationing ammo
I swear, the people that parrot this shit never actually beat a classic RE game.

>>11824004
my first time playing the original Resident Evil, I didn't have enough ammo left to finish the first Tyrant fight, ended up restarting the whole time and did much better at managing my ammo the second time around.

>>11824145
You did not have a single Beretta clip?

>>11823649
I like how you omit Goldeneye or Mario Kart or Zelda.

>>11824004
You may find this shocking but first time players do not utilise speedrun strats to avoid every enemy and will often shoot a lot (and miss no less) so ammo is not in abundance.

Bot thread

>>11823936
RE3 gives you so much ammo it's embarrassing.

>>11824151
>You may find this shocking but first time players do not utilise speedrun strats to avoid every enemy
What the fuck is this cope? A first-time player would be way more inclined to explore every room because they don't know which rooms are optional. The game has enough ammo to kill everything twice, so If you explore the entire map and still run out of ammo, you're just fucking bad.
>will often shoot a lot (and miss no less)
The fucking game has auto-aim

>>11824149
Zelda was dead until they released Breath of the Wild, and Goldeneye went nowhere as well.

Fair, you have Mario Kart. Out of the 8 gigantic releases on the N64, only 1 actually carried on its legacy consistently.

>>11824424
not every version has auto-aim

>>11823936
>Because stupid people is where the money is.
Obviously. Everyone with two brain cells pirates games instead of paying for them.

>>11824486
The only classic RE game to not have auto-aim is the original US release of RE1 because Capcom made it harder to combat rentals.

>>11824503
>The only classic RE game to not have auto-aim is the one that comment was specifically about

>>11824520
>is the one that comment was specifically about
First, he only said ORIGINAL Resident Evil, not Original release of Resident Evil. Second, if he was playing the game properly, aka actually exploring the map, he wouldn't have run out of ammo in the first EVEN if he is playing the original release. Third, the whole thing started with a post talking about Classis RE as a whole, not a very specific port Capcom themselves made harder.

>>11824004
You do have to ration ammo in 1, 2 early on and 3 if you're completely retarded. But if you play RE1 blind you'll fuck up your first playthrough emptying clips

>>11822757 (OP)
extremely fun to play that you can still enjoy them after beating them hundreds of times

>>11824424
Don't the zombies respawn infinitely in the final area?

>>11824591
>You do have to ration ammo in 1
Only when playing as Chris until he gets the Shotgun. Jill is easy mode.

>2 early on
There are around 75 bullets just on the route to the RPD alone.

>3 if you're completely retarded
Unless you're fighting Nemesis at every chance, something new players won't be doing, you will never run out of ammo. You're more likely to run outta health items before ammo.

>But if you play RE1 blind you'll fuck up your first playthrough emptying clips
On my first time playing RE1, I checked every nook and cranny in the entire game and ended up beating the game with more than enough ammo.

You have to be blind/wasting bullets to ever run outta ammo.

>>11823952
Yup, this anon nailed it. A lot of games were taking advantage of the CD-based technology to incorporate live footage but it was an awkward pastiche where you would just have a normal game with random FMV bits slapped on top of it or game that was nothing *but* non-interactive cutscenes.

Resident evil started off with some low-res movie footage too, but then when it transitioned into the game itself it didn't feel like an abrubt transition. The camera angles, incredibly detailed backgrounds and voice acting made it feel like a continuation of the scene you'd just watched. And they didn't go back to any more fmv footage. The story was told in-game with the character models you played with.

MGS hit people the same way for the same reason. Final fantasy VII was impressive as shit but it still had that dichotomy between the playable portion of the game and the pre-rendered cutscenes which were clearly operating on two separate levels. Whereas MGS and Resident evil had a consistency to them where even when there were cutscenes they took place in the same in-game world you played in. It was all one coherent presentation and that was way more immersive

>>11824887
>You have to be blind/wasting bullets to ever run outta ammo

You're kind of forgetting that survival horror was still a somewhat novel genre at the time. A lot of people playing it blind at release absolutely did waste their ammo early on in their first playthrough because the natural inclination is to shoot at threats and it's not immediately clear how limited the ammo is and how much of a bullet sponge all the enemies are. If you had no idea what survival horror was, had a gun and a spare clip and had a zombie chasing you you probably unloaded on it the first time because why wouldn't you?

What I remember happening to me and all my friends was plowing through the initial ammo and health supplies very quickly, having that "oh shit" moment where you realize you're down to 2 bullets and the knife, learning to avoid threats and then having a euphoric moment when you actually found more ammo or herbs. And by that point you realized this shit was like gold so you didn't waste it any more. But there was definitely a learning curve.

And the worst case scenario was you just started over, which wasn't so bad. The game isn't long once you know what you're doing and we were so blown away by it that replaying it from the start wasn't a big deal. Shit, I didn't even have a fucking memory card when I first got RE1. I just played it as long as I could without saving and eventually realized I was never going to make any real progress so I had to beg my parents to buy one. That's how new all this shit was. We weren't even sure we needed external storage and had to find out the hard way

>>11824448
>Zelda was dead until they released Breath of the Wild, and Goldeneye went nowhere as well.
Jesus Christ are you trying to troll or just really retarded?

>>11824991
>You're kind of forgetting that survival horror was still a somewhat novel genre at the time. A lot of people playing it blind at release absolutely did waste their ammo early on in their first playthrough because the natural inclination is to shoot at threats and it's not immediately clear how limited the ammo is and how much of a bullet sponge all the enemies are. If you had no idea what survival horror was, had a gun and a spare clip and had a zombie chasing you you probably unloaded on it the first time because why wouldn't you?
Sounds like turbo shitters who probably shouldn't be playing games. There is so much ammo nobody with a functioning brain ever runs out of ammo.

Another stupid zoomerbot question thread. Make a thread on /wsr/. Fuck this board, fuck the /v/ refugees, and fuck the jannies.

>>11825047
You already established you played an easier version of the game and didn't even know it, get off your high horse already.

>>11825047
Why are you like this? Ammo is limited in RE1. That's just a fact. It's one of the core gameplay mechanics. If you had enough ammo to just casually shoot everything without at least some mild degree of rationing it would be RE4.

There's more than enough ammo to beat the game, obviously. But that's assuming you know where it all is and actually find it, that you don't miss a few shots thanks to tank controls and trying to shoot at enemies who are off-screen sometimes, that you don't have bad luck with the headshot RNG, that you know which enemies can be just ignored or dodged...yeah, it's a pretty easy game IF you know all this shit. How the fuck would people playing it for the first time in 1996 know all this shit? We had to figure it out as we went. Which meant, in the beginning, you might have occasionally run short on ammo.

>>11824424
>The fucking game has auto-aim

I think its funny you're bragging about how much better you are at RE1 than the people who played it blind on release but you just casually reveal that you never even played the original version. Congrats on beating REmake two years ago you zoomer scum

They are good games

>>11824424
>The fucking game has auto-aim
You've played a version with auto-aim?
Enemies have less health in versions with auto-aim (JP or Director's Cut)
You should have let everyone here know that you've played the game in easy mode so we know we can completely ignore your posts

>>11825074
>you played an easier version of the game
You mean the most accessible version of the fucking game.
>PS1 JP release
>PS1 US release
>Saturn
>OG PC
>Directors Cut
>Directors Cut Dual Shocker
>DS
>Source Next/GOG
There are 8 different versions of RE1, and only ONE of them was purposely made harder.

>>11825268
Yeah and that one version was the one we were talking about. Stop trying to do some ex post facto revision that makes your previous commets more valid. You just talked out of your ass and revealed your ignorance. Take the L, move along and think twice next time before you decide to be an edgelord.

>>11825268
>only ONE of them was purposely made harder
Wrong
There's the original US PS1 released which is the one we were talking about, and there's also the US Saturn version which is even harder (Ticks which replace Hunters in the caves can do their decap move from closer, making them harder to dodge, and Chris has to fight 2 Tyrants)

>see this thread
>remember that I've never touched a RE game
>finally give it a try and install the RE HD
>30 minutes of Jill gameplay and already 6 deaths to the first zombie

Fun. Maybe I should just run.

>>11823627
>First horror game with good graphics
LOL no grandpa!

>>11825368
In the classics on normal you can kill every enemy twice over. Just shoot at them with your weapons.

>>11825286
Lol you're the one that need to check yourself. I have no idea why you are so fucking fixated on JUST this one game that was purposely made harder when the whole conversation started from a post talking about Classic RE as a whole. Longbox RE1 is the exception, not the rule.

>>11825301
>US Saturn version which is even harder (Ticks which replace Hunters in the caves can do their decap move from closer, making them harder to dodge,
Just blast them, they still have the same health and by that point will be swimming in Magnum ammo
>and Chris has to fight 2 Tyrants)
You got more than enough ammo for it, and it's not like the fight is in anyway hard.

>>11825380
I've shoot the cunt and he comes back to eat me. So I need to kill him twice ?

Well fuck. This will take longer than my first Dark Souls run.

>>11825386
>Longbox RE1 is the exception

Unless you're talking about 1996 in which case it was literally the only version of the game available in North America. I'd ask why you find this concept so difficult to grasp but it's pretty obvious you're just full of shit and can't admit you were wrong about something.

>>11825452
Lol why are you so fucking obsessed with this one specific version of RE1 and why do you keep ignoring every other Classic RE game?

>>11826047
>the "lol bro who cares why are we still talking about this?" strategy
Not gonna work here

>>11825115
>bad luck with the headshot RNG
There is no headshot RNG in RE1.

>>11822757 (OP)
We were kids and these games felt scary to us back then.

>>11825386
>purposely made harder

I really don't know what point you think you're making by repeating this over and over. I'm guessing it's the "muh rentals" strategy. Mikami may have said that in "the true story behind biohazard" (spoiler: the "true" story isn't told solely through Mikami's eyes), but he also said in another interview the western version was made harder because western players wanted hard games.
And if you didn't want to just pick&choose whatever piece of information you think fits your story, you would also consider the fact that the game went through some heavy balance changes through the last month of dev, up to the very last days, and that the devs claimed they all sucked at the game. This shows how much they struggled with balancing the game properly and that could also help explain why the JPN version is easier

BTW the PC versions also give access to the hard mode though at least in one case you have to unlock it

>>11826104
Zombie healths are semi-randomized though so that guy's point still stands. In the western version it can make a big difference early on whether zombies go down in 8 or 13 beretta shots.

>>11823936
This was never true, especially not since RE2. They bukkake'd you with ammo.

Great music and sound effects;
Great graphics;
Great presentation;
Great puzzles;
Good story.

>>11824424
>The game has enough ammo to kill everything twice
Outing yourself as a stupid fucking zoomer who played the game on youtube lol lmao

>>11824617
Nope, just three times.

>>11824991
Exactly. Zoomers larping they played the game at release are easy to spot because they miss out that nobody playing survival horror at the time had any idea you were supposed to conserve ammo and going to wrong route (at least as Chris) was a god damn death sentence unless you quickly adapted to 3 shots one knife to down them as your ammo dropped down to a single clip that couldn't even get you past a horde of zombies. On top of that, without ammo aim and fixed camera angles, it was easy to miss some shots and shotgun decaps weren't evident unless you let menu screen roll or watch some videos on television. And Hunters were a god damn pain in the ass to deal with it since aiming at them triggered the jump and made you miss shells too. Of course after you've played the game to death it's easy to get around all this but anyone at the time coming fresh to this style and still being a kid/teenager had no fucking idea and got stomped hard, at least a few times. Which is what made it so iconic. Same was replicated for Resident Evil 3 as anyone who attempted to take down Nemesis quickly figured out why there was an abundant fuckload of ammo and subsequent playthroughs trying to fight it quickly taught players that mowing down enemies was no longer an option.

>>11823952
The FMV opening is fucking superb. Then the gameplay follows that and is above board quite good.
Even something as basic as checking the foyer door is a masterclass in what you can do after a opening FMV.

>>11825047
Its a shame the game design trend is so weak now.
It used to be very normal that you could ultra fuck your playtrough, and restarting was more viable. And since the game was like that, it was significantly less than a hassle.

>>11824004
Missing shots/not finishing zombies + not finding much of the available ammo.
Sure, when you know the game there is enough ammo to kill everything 10 times over but a new player can actually struggle.

>>11824004
Play RE2 on Hard and you'll need to ration ammo.

>>11830507
With Claire specifically
Leon's shotgun still decaps zombies in one shell even on Hard

>>11830694
Yeah, Claire B is brutal. The pistol and the crossbow are completely useless and it takes 2-3 grenade rounds to kill a single zombie.

>>11830694
>>11830701
You can decap zombies with the crossbow, you aim down for the legs instead. But yeah, I agree, without circumventing the devs poor enemy programming (or abusing the quick shot glitch for headshots), Claire A is a fucking hell even if you opt out to just kill the few zombies you really need to and try to dodge everything else.

>>11822757 (OP)
>good graphics, better gameplay, better ideas
Tomb Raider was 96, two years earlier and even then it looked like dogshit. everyone knew better looking textures were possible because Quake was showcasing where 3d games could go and they were a small team of developers. so if small fish like id software could do something like Quake there was no excuse anymore

studios like Core placed way to much emphasis on engine building instead of artists. they rebuilt a brand new engine for Ninja Shadow of Darkness and well the game was underwhelming in all regards.

Capcom made the decision most rational people would and said "yeh fuck fully 3d environments we're not ready for that", so they were able to make way better enemies and player models with better textures and still have room for FMV scenes. Their artist teams could just focus on making great assets basically.

MGS by comparison was straight up black magic, as much as Kojima and Konami got praise, the dev team behind them were working at an unprecedented level. They got all the tooling good enough to the point that artist teams could pick them up but they also managed to get everything, including some FMV onto the discs.
>fully 3d environments
>good resolution textures in those environments, pictures on walls etc
>effects (Otacon pissing himself, alpha effects like steam, blood spray, gun smoke etc)
>rudimentary physics (grenades, magazine casings, shell casings)
>world physics (moving doors etc)
>environment mutations and texture swaps (snake leaving footprints in the snow, damaged walls, walking in water puddles)
>fully realized lighting and movie effects (too many to list and go through)
>fully realized combat system and movement system

Yuji Korekado and Makoto Sonoyama are two particular unsung heroes of the MGS series that built an insane engine and integrated tooling for making the games. By comparison Tomb Raider looked like it was made a decade ago at the time.

>>11831569
>Tomb Raider was 96, two years earlier
Tomb Raider came out 7 months after RE1

>>11824887
>Only when playing as Chris until he gets the Shotgun.
By the time that happens, you will likely already be almost down with the first mansion section as Chris finds the shotgun and the broken shotgun on opposite ends of the map, with the broken shotgun being behind an Armor Key door. By the time you get the shotgun normally, you have already seen almost the entire mansion aside from a few armor key doors.
>There are around 75 bullets just on the route to the RPD alone.
And on the streets you run into 33 zombies. At least 3 will directly be in your way and the last streets section is crowded with SIX zombies, (not to mention the narrow alley where you have to get around 3 zombies crowding around you). Presuming you do get the shotgun/crossbow early, that's another FOUR zombies you are in some way dealing with.
Not to mention the fact that once in the RPD, you have two paths
>the hunter equivalent in Hallway A (followed by 7 zombies in the following areas)
>The 6 zombies in Hallway B (followed by 9 more in the explorable area)
Now, you might go, "Well RE2 gives you a lot of ammo so THERE", but presuming you do get the early shotgun (so, presuming this is Leon A) and know where ALL the ammo is located, you will have:
>H&K VP70 w/ 18 bullets (game start)
>Remington M1100-P w/ 4 bullets (Kendo)
>75 handgun bullets on the streets (15 hidden)
>90 handgun bullets in the RPD pre-STARS office (45 hidden)
>7 shotgun shells (in the East Office, behind 11 zombies)
Seriously, RE2 gives you a lot of ammo because there's a lot of fucking enemies, and the hidden ammo is pretty well fucking hidden.

>>11829137
Glad someone else gets it. And the thing is, that's not even a problem. Finding yourself in dire straits and getting killed because you didn't have any ammo or health left is part of the survival horror experience. It's horrifying because you might, you know, DIE.

And that initial learning curve drew the game out a bit without having to artificially pad the length. If you could just gun everything down from the beginning you could beat the game in like a day. I've beat RE1 in like 3-4 hours when I wasn't even trying to finish it quickly. It's just a very succinct game with no bloat or wasted time. I like that about it.

>>11826047
Because we were talking about people's experience playing the game at launch when only this version was available and none of the other ones were. Even a retard like you can understand this. Stop being dishonest and quit coping. You spoke out of hubris and put your foot in your mouth. It happens. Tripling down on your mistake just makes you seem like even more of a narcissistic little bitch.

>>11822757 (OP)
as already stated itt, very few people had played Alone in the Dark or Ecstatica because computers cost a rack back when it was released. and nobody played Dr Hauzer because it was a Japanese-exclusive 3DO game.
the Playstation was affordable and so became the market's first big exposure to the concepts.

>>11831569
>Capcom made the decision most rational people would and said "yeh fuck fully 3d environments we're not ready for that"
fun trivia, Kamiya was responsible for that.
he says when he was brought on, they were rendering everything in full 3D environments.
then he played AitD.

>>11823301
Alone in the dark was cool and deserved to be just as popular, but RE definitely benefited from better hardware and more consistent horror

>>11822757 (OP)
First game was a hit, second more so. Other publishers took notice and cranked out their own take on survival horror (Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve, etc.,) Capcom kept releasing good titles in the series, with only few exceptions, so it managed to survive. Now, like many franchises that have survived since then, it has legendary status.

>>11832397
People are nostalgic about Alone in the Dark and I remember thinking it was doing interesting things when it first came out but the disparity between its reception and resident evil isn't hard to explain. Alone in the dark was so fucking rough around the edges. It was caught in the awkward transition form 2D to 3D and the transition from pure point and click adventure games to ones with action unfolding in real time. It was just fucking clunky.

We were all impressed by it conceptually and it was a very new and exciting experience at the time but when RE came out it was immediately obvious that this was what they'd been aiming for all along and they just never completely pulled it off. Resident Evil pulled it off.

>>11832692
i'm gonna call you a tourist.
you were either not alive when AitD released or not part of a family that could afford a computer that could run it even remotely around its release.

what do you think about Little Big Adventure, in regards to this "transition from point and click to real-time" action games?

no shit RE was better realized, it came out 4 years after AitD. if you were actually alive back then, you don't need to be reminded about how FAST technology was improving in just a year's time.

>>11831569
>if small fish like id software
Okay, FUCK...YOU!

>>11832692
RE is literally the same game with better framerate and some simplified controls, it's not impressive at all considering it came out 4 years later, the spookier soundtrack is the only improvement not 100% attributed to better hardware.

>>11832793
don't forget the simplified inventory. AitD allows you to put down items literally anywhere and the games remembers, no item box involved. RE didn't figure out how to do that until literally 10 goddamn years later with RE0.

>>11832783
Not him, but I'm pretty sure he means that dev teams that were smaller were doing much better than teams twice as large.

>>11832658
Dino Crisis was Capcom too my dude. The first one even had the same director as RE1/RE4.

>>11824991
Yeah this Anon got it right, I remember playing RE 2 as a kid and being horrified at the prospect of running out of bullets, I remember thinking how can Leon cope and if I was Leon i would just put the final bullet in my own brain. Obviously by modern standards the game isn't that scary but things were different when you were 12 years old and pre-rendered PS1 graphics were state-of the-art.

>>11832361
I remember reading an article stating that the first AITD game actually sold 500K copies so it was a solid hit back in the day but it was no Doom.

>>11833251
looking it up, it sold that much over a 5 year period. so if we're being generous, it might have sold 100k copies every year.
compare that with RE1, which had sold 4 million in the first year.
the cost of entry was absolutely a factor. a Playstation was just so much cheaper than a computer.

>>11833251
>>11833906
It's more to do with people not being entirely enthralled by the gameplay concepts of AitD (and later Overblood, which draws on that title a fair bit).
Alone in the Dark is more of a 3D adventure game than it is "survival horror". Your first tasks in the game are essentially to die, as you're on a timer with two enemies making their way to the attic, and that establishes the sentiment of the game. You learn the environment and the tricks, you learn what rooms you should enter, what rooms are best avoided, where the giant pitfall is, etc., and it culminates in some... "ambitious" 3D platforming as you reach the end.
What made RE successful was primarily its own unique gameplay loop which encouraged combat and speed and gamified the whole concept of limited supplies and horror.

>>11833920
not sure where you're getting the "not entirely enthralled" stuff from. not only did nearly every mag review of AitD absolutely praise it, i'm searching through usenet posts from 1992-1993 right now and it's full of people discussing the game, asking for hints and giving it praise.
as for Overblood, don't forget Hillsoft had already made an AitD close themselves a few years before RE1, Dr. Hauzer.
i still say the biggest reason RE1 blew up and AitD didn't was because the cost of a machine to even play the game was too high for most people.

>>11834146
>not only did nearly every mag review of AitD absolutely praise it
Look at the context of most of those mags- ones focused on PC titles or reviewed by those who review PC games no doubt.
For a PC player the game is a greater object of intrigue as it is far closer to PC game roots, reminiscent of more cruel and punishing adventure games (even then, AitD itself is fairly easy compared to a decent number of them).
I honestly don't think AitD would've ever blown up on console the same way because of that. Sure, being PC only was a limitation, but Doom was also PC only and still blew up in 1993. Maniac Mansion and Myst were much the same.
Alone in the Dark was just niche while Resident Evil appealed to more console centric sensibilities in its game design.
>as for Overblood, don't forget Hillsoft had already made an AitD close themselves a few years before RE1, Dr. Hauzer.
I mentioned Overblood because it got an international release on the PSX. Even had Hauzer gotten an international release, it was still exclusive to what we can term a 'dead end' console.
Alone in the Dark actually did release on the 3DO two years prior to RE, but it not getting that much buzz is not something I'll blame on AitD being 'innately unappealing' or anything, the 3DO was just not the biggest player on the field.

>>11834160
Pretty much every magazine preview/review of RE1 mentionned the likeness with AitD, I'm talking console magazines.

Also AitD was the first game to mix 2D pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D models so it was a pretty big deal that influence the industry for the decade to come, like how Final Fantasy VII used a similar system (FF7's is more akin to Little Big Adventure but that's from the same devs as AitD).

>>11834160
>PC mags reviewed a PC game!
well yeah, the only console port it ever got was the 3DO. PC-98 and FM Towns were not sold in America, anon.
DOOM certainly blew up, but it only outsold AitD by about 40k copies in its first year. Myst was the big breakout success, selling 500k in the first year.
point is, PC gamers seemed to like the game just fine. here, you can see for yourself.
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure/search?q=aitd%20before%3A1996%2F01%2F01
>the 3DO was just not the biggest player on the field.
and was also too expensive.

>>11834160
>>11834168
also what this anon says.
when interviewed, the first thing Kamiya was asked was
>What makes this game different from Alone in the Dark?
and his answer was
>The graphics!

>>11834168
Yeah, it's employment of 2D images as backgrounds to put over bare geometry was significant, I'm not denying that. What I am saying is that it would not have been successful the way RE was with general audiences because the two have completely different design philosophies.
It's sort of like how SH also wasn't as successful as RE- had nothing to do with game quality (SH1-3 were on average far better productions than the comparable RE titles) or some idea of fatigue, but simply because the systems RE employed were uniquely addictive and arcadey.
>>11834175
Yeah, that was my point, that the people more inclined to like AitD were PC gamers given the kind of DNA it shares. AitD is far closer to titles on the PC than the titles console players enjoy.

>>11834182
>the people more inclined to like AitD were PC gamers
obviously not, with how popular RE became.
but, here, you can also take a look at all the 3DO owners that loved it.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.3do/search?q=aitd

>>11834194
The games are of completely different design philosophies. This poster specifically compares it to MYST and 7th Guest, which is apt, rather than a more action oriented game like Metal Gear (NES), which would be a comparison you could make to RE.

>>11834209
>The games are of completely different design philosophies.
they're really not.
AitD is the direct inspiration for RE1, as admitted by Kamiya and Mikami. male/female character selection, pre-rendered backgrounds with static camera angles, up/down aiming. they play almost identical, aside from some of the actions being implemented through context instead of a menu selection; being made 4 years later will naturally come with QoL improvements.

>>11834220
It's the direct inspiration for how it controls and looks, but the game design is still pulling from Fujiwara's NES days. It's naturally to credit so much to AitD when it is visually the core of RE, but the actual gameplay systems are alien to that title.

>>11834230
but they're not alien at all. every action in AitD is also in RE, save for jumping, just not accessed through a menu. like i said, they even lifted AitD's up/down aiming.
AitD's inventory system was definitely more complex, RE didn't manage to copy it until 10 years later.