It was a surprise (albeit a pleasant one) for fans when GOG.com brought the original Resident Evil trilogy back to PC. In fact, it was even a surprise for Capcom, who initially weren’t too keen on having the 1996 original on the service.
In a new interview with The Game Business, GOG‘s senior business development manager Marcin Paczynski was talking about the retro gaming scene, and GOG’s aim to preserve these classic games for future generations, but also to give old-school gamers a chance to relive their favorites from their childhood. When talk turned to the original Resident Evil trilogy, Marcin stated that Capcom was originally against the idea of resurrecting those ports. Instead, Capcom was more interested in getting players to play the modern remakes of each game.
“I was one of the people that spearheaded this project,” says Paczynski. “Capcom were like, ‘we have all of those remakes. It’s already the superior experience to those games.’ They didn’t really see the value in bringing back the vanilla versions.” According to Paczynski, it took a lot of convincing by GOG to get Capcom on board, explaining that there is still very much an audience for those original games, and that they would love to experience exactly the same game again.
Thankfully, Capcom agreed to allow GOG to proceed.
“When we launched [Resident Evil] on GOG, the reception was absolutely phenomenal. We have 94% positive reviews on GOG for all of them. And that was also reflected in the sales. It proved that there is an audience for this. The classical versions, the versions we all remember from our childhood, they still hold a lot of value.”
When Capcom saw the response, they turned around and agreed to let GOG do the same with Dino Crisis and Dino Crisis 2, which launched on GOG this past January.
All five titles have been tweaked to include several “quality of life improvements” and enhanced compatibility for modern computers. All five are also part of GOG’s new Preservation Program, which aims to ensure that the games “live forever” by making them as forward compatible as possible.
And if you’re wondering about GOG’s work on the original Resident Evil, read Aaron’s thoughts.
