i hear it thrown around a lot that resident evil 1 somehow hasnt aged well, that it's aged poorly and been fully replaced by its remake, i don't believe this at all and i'm not sure the people who tend to say it have even played the game enough to have came to this conclusion, that this is just an idea that came from people who also haven't played it that want to put out a narrative that old = bad, it's silly and wholley untrue, resident evil 1 is as good as its ever been and still remains both one of the best games in the series, but also i think one of the best horror games ever made. it's iconic, its perfectly designed and memorable, it has a fantastic look thats still eerie in a weird way and it has the most quotable lines in the series. i replay it at least once a year, usually just one route but sometimes i'll do both and i always beat the whole game in one sitting with a coffee and some snacks, it's always one of the coziest nights of the year.

resident evil 1 wasn't the first survival horror, sure there's debates around that, project firestart, sweet home, alone in the dark, even haunted house for atari, but its a needless distinction to make anyway because none of them really popularised it in the same way resident evil 1 did and it spawned a whole golden age of the genre spanning 2 whole generations of classic after classic, dino crisis, rule of rose, blue stinger and chaos break. it's a genre run thats almost unmatched outside of the RPGS that spanned those same generations or the vita and psps perfect run of otome games. play it for a little and you can see why, it didn't pioneer that gameplay style sure, alone in the dark already did that, but it did it better and brought it much more in line with what i think is the gold standard for horror game controls, a fixed camera with tank controlls and easy to control autoaim systems (though this last bit was absent from localised releases all the way to directors cut) and fun items and puzzles to find, none of them are too obtuse or difficult and some are even kind of clever like the puzzle boss fights (like the two plants and the shark) and a much later password puzzle and the combat is never too tough with it, the game gives you enough ammo to work with but it can be kind of dicy depending on what version of the game you're playing, the lack of autoaim in the original release can leave you with very low ammo if you arent careful, but in DC you will for sure have a surplus later on, but early it can be very tense, it became the standard for a reason. explaining the appeal can be a little weird for me though, the style just feels like something you either like or you don't, i find it just has a special feeling to it, i love how the pre-renders look, i love how tank controls feel and the ease of combat because of the auto-aim, they don't require a lot of dexterity to get through and so when i found myself initially getting into games, i gravitated a lot towards games like this because they felt simple to master and easy to play, it can still be a difficult game especially in certain ports and modes (like the directors cuts advanced mode which changes item placements and enemies) but on a base level it makes for a very accessable experiance i find, at least if you don't mind how different it can feel compared to modern games, i prefer it to a lot of the modern horror templates like your third person shooters (which i have trouble aiming in) or first person schemes (which i just flat out dislike), so yeah i think the game is still incredably fun to play, its so well designed you can even beat it knife only if you wanted to, its built with that in mind, this aspect has not aged badly at all and honestly may be even more fun now, considering that its just the type of game that doesn't get made anymore on a large scale, even modern indie throwbacks tend to go more towards first person styles rather than how games like it played, making it feel more special to me.

the graphics too i think still look great, there's an art to pre-rendered backgrounds that has been lost as we started getting beyond the ps2 generation, i don't think there's ever been a pre-rendered game thats looked bad, they always have cool camera angles that showcase rooms in a nice looking way and theres even a comfort to them i feel, its why the save rooms in games like this became so much more iconic compared to say, the ones in resident evil 7, they feel comforting to me, with so much room for details that can make them feel real, like places you'd want to see, sure in this case they can be a little basic looking and very unrealistic, but that also has its own charm, what once looked realistic now looks uncanny, the fake feeling nature of it makes it more eerie with how low-poly and weirdly coloured so much of it is. it's also a very different kind of horror compared to many later games, a focus on an eerie atmosphere and less on gore and body horror, in this one there isn't even a whole lot of body horror outside of tyrant and maybe the chimera and the gore is contained to a few cutscenes and some death animations, its a nice change of pace, quaint in a good way, throwing back to a time when you didn't really need to be all that extreme to be scary, even the sillier aspects like the very cheesy FMV intro sequence was pretty scary for a lot of people, it even had to be censored in many releases of the game, i love this intro though, its funny now but its just really charming and the cast seem like they're having a lot of fun with it and its just so iconic with the dumb poses and explosions and the music, you cannot hate this OP. the mansion and its surroundings are also just super iconic, i could map out the entire thing by hand and name every room and most of the item placements, its been revived a bunch for multiplayer games and sequels that reference it and its easy to see why, a lot of the rooms have iconic imagry and situations, like the shotgun trap room, the safe rooms, the statue room or even the art gallery, its even well laid out with a few ways to progress and routes you can take, the other areas, a guardhouse, some gardens, a small cave system and a lab are all almost as well designed, though not as free form, they tend to be a lot more linier with only one real way to progress, but each one has its own gimmick, the waterfall/dam you need to raise and lower in the gardens, the plants, a small flooded segment and bees in the guardhouse, the traps in the caves and a steamy engine room where you almost cant hear a thing in the labs, they all feel distinct, even the mansion when you come back to it feels fresh with new rooms and enemies present and it gives the game really good variety for the length (about 7 hours your first run with some unlockables for future runs)

the characters are also really great here, for a start there's two you can play as, chris and jill and both have pretty different campaigns, meeting different characters and having different strengths and weaknesses, chris is the harder of the two and jill is the easier, though what is nice is that jills is easier entirely because she's just more compitant than chris, she has more item slots, starts with a gun, can do things like mix chemicles, play the piano and can pick locks, while chris has a little bit more health and the two even get unique partner characters, with barry giving jill some help with getting the shotgun and some free ammo for a weapon that chris can't use and chris getting free heals from rebecca, it makes both well worth playing, they're also just all great characters with wesker and some dying randos from the team filling out the rest of the cast, everyone in the main cast is fantastic, with badly acted quotable dialogue (every barry line is gold and chris's final scene with wesker is hilarious) that make them some of my favourite characters in any game, they all even show up again in other games, sometimes playable and sometimes not, even barry and rebecca get their own games with zero and revelations 2, they're, and i've used this a lot, iconic and fun and written in the best kind of way, overly optimistic americans as written by japanese developers, they carry a sense of perserverence and hope that gets you all emotional, you know, that ending credits with the cheesy gutar song playing makes me cry every time, even though just two minuites ago we were blowing the final boss to pieces with a rocket launcher, which is the best way to end a game, sure the story isn't amazing, you could maybe even argue its not good, but it works and theres some genuinely creepy notes laying around to flesh up the world and the characters really carry it with how charmingly they're written, i don't care if its "bad" because i like it anyway and i have an attachment to it that i don't think will ever go away.

it has an amazing ost as well, each song is memorable and well done, at least in the first two major ports, the duelshock version is a whole other vibe with a very different ost by a fraud composer who also did the same for the original version of onimusha, that one i don't think is bad, basement theme and all and it has some songs i even prefer a little, but i do think the original OST is much better, the save theme and rebeccas themes are perfect and the credits theme may be my favourite song in the whole series, it all does a perfect job of setting up the atmosphere, its spooky when it needs to be and when its calming or hype it does its job even better. the music was done by 3 people in this case, one being Makoto Tomozawa, known for games like mega man x, 7 and legends, dino crisis 1&2, PN.03 and most recently sword art online: fatal bullet, also on board was Akari Kaida, who has worked on games like night warriors, breath of fire 3, onimusha 3, battle network and okami and very recently did some music for one of my GOTY's: fashion dreamer (please play fashion dreamer) and lastly Masami Ueda who has worked on tons of future resident evil games like 2&3 and many of the remakes as well as a bunch of other cool action games like DMC, viewtiful joe, bayonetta, valkyrie elysium and star ocean 6!

it'd go on to have a bunch of really interesting ports to, some like the pc version have exclusive weapons (a machinegun), some like the saturn version and the directors cut have new modes (battle mode and advanced mode) and some like DS would have completely reworked and new mechanics to use the systems hardware, or have new music like duelshock, i'd reccomend the saturn and ds versions personally, battle mode is a lot of fun as a proto-mercenaries deal and the DS is just the overall best port, combining the best of each version with its own touches though the easiest version to play nowadays and the version i played for this run would be the ps5 version of directors cut which is absolutely reccomended if neither of those work for you, there's also the remake, a version i assume people are much more readily familaliar with and for good reason, it's arguably better and still one of the best games ever made, but i do think it helps enhance the original as a seperate experiance, rather than fully replacing it. the games staff also went on to do some very cool games and many are icons in the industry in their own right, like shinji mikami who has made some of the best games out there, the likes of killer7, resident evil 4, vanquish, god hand, personal favs of mine PN.03 and shadows of the damned, he even headed his own studio for a while with tango game works, makers of evil within and ghostwire tokyo. you also had tokuro fujiwara producing, he's i think mostly known now for his work on the tomba series, some of my favourite platformers but hes also worked on a ton of other cool stuff like extermination, hungry ghosts and madworld! even hideki kamiya had a role in here as a planner, he would eventually go on to make resident evil 2 and a ton of the best action games ever made with the likes of devil may cry, bayonetta and wonderful 101 and helped to found platnum games, they had a real dream team here. i really hope i convinced you to, if you haven't already, give the original game a shot, especially if you've only played the remake, i think playing it will help give more perspective and love towards both and its a fantastic time on its own, i even think some parts here like the dialogue are just better (or more iconic at least) than the remakes take on them, it was influencial for a reason and i think it deserves a lot more love than it gets these days.