The old-school Resident Evil trilogy almost never returned to PC — and according to GOG, Capcom initially didn’t think it was worth the effort. That’s according to The Game Business’s interview with GOG’s Senior Business Development Manager, Marcin Paczynski. While many publishers today treat nostalgia like a gold mine, Capcom almost passed up its own golden goose.
Paczynski, who spearheaded the project to bring the original Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 to GOG, explained that the publisher saw little ‘value’ in returning to the so-called vanilla versions. After all, Capcom believed that the modern remakes are already ‘the superior experience’ to the 90s original releases.
“They didn’t really see the value in bringing back the vanilla versions,” said Paczynski. “It took a lot of convincing that there is an audience that has a lot of memories about those games, and would love to experience exactly the same game again.”
Nevertheless, despite Capcom’s hesitation, the results spoke for themselves. When GOG finally launched the PlayStation-era Resident Evil trilogy on its store, the reception was ‘absolutely phenomenal.’ All three games garnered roughly 94% positive user reviews, and sales were similarly strong, proving that nostalgia is an often underestimated market.
“The classical versions, the versions we all remember from our childhood, they still hold a lot of value,” he added.
Ironically, that mindset runs counter to Capcom’s long-standing approach with its other flagship series. The company has reissued Street Fighter II and its countless variations across nearly every generation of hardware, turning ‘Super Turbo Championship HD Edition’ label into a meme. Mega Man 1 through 6, too, have been repackaged multiple times, not counting digital releases.
Yet when it came to Resident Evil — one of its top three franchises — the company hesitated to let fans revisit the untouched originals, favoring complete ground-up HD remakes instead.
Still, we can see this as a victory for retro gamers everywhere. Especially now, when Capcom is in the middle of yet another rerelease spree. From Mega Man EXE and Star Force, Ace Attorney bundles, to Arcade Stadium and the Capcom Fighting Collection. Because if Capcom is going to keep mining its back catalog, it might as well not leave behind the series that started its golden era of survival horror.
