GOG has revealed that they are releasing the original Resident Evil trilogy, in partnership with Capcom.
They shared this statement in their announcement:
“In joint efforts with the original creators, Capcom, we’re thrilled to announce the re-release of the original Resident Evil™, the groundbreaking series that heralded the golden age of the survival horror genre!
This iconic classic is now available with all its original content intact, featuring quality of life improvements and enhanced compatibility for modern systems. As part of GOG’s ongoing effort to protect and preserve classic games, Resident Evil is now available on the DRM-free GOG store!”
So, maybe some gamers are too young to remember this. But while the first three Resident Evil games were closely associated with the PlayStation, they were all also released on the PC during that console generation as well. These versions of the game were superior to their PlayStation releases, because they could be run on better hardware, depending on the particular build of course.
We reported on a PEGI rating for the PC version of the original Resident Evil last week, but of course, we were expecting this for Steam and not GOG. But GOG working with Capcom means that they actually did the legwork for this port, and of course, that also means that these new versions of the classic games will be DRM-free.
As expected, the GOG listing for the first Resident Evil comes with this description:
“Completely uncut, with even more blood, graphic violence and gory scenes than the worldwide monster hit version on PlayStation”
They also tout features that were not available in the original release in the 1990s, such as new rendering options from Windowed Mode, Vertical Synchronization Control, Gamma Correction, Integer Scaling, Anti-Aliasing, a better game video player and cutscene timing, better registry settings, compatibility with modern controllers, etc.
Capcom has been publishing with GOG for a while now, but their offerings have not been that big. In fact, their only other games on the platform now is their 1997 Windows port of Street Fighter Alpha 2, and the more recent Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen. There is clearly a wealth of games that Capcom could bring to GOG, including modern games but also perhaps some of their classics. Why would Capcom not be able to offer Capcom Arcade Studio, or the Ace Attorney franchise DRM-free, for example?
For GOG, this could hopefully open up doors to work with other Japanese game studios to bring their own games to their platform, in the very special way that only GOG does. For example, we would trust GOG to bring the original 2002 PC release of Silent Hill 2 back for modern computers. They already made their own versions of the PC Metal Gear Solid games. Let’s hope that GOG gets to expand to even more classic PC rereleases of some real bangers.
