Resident Evil 2 (Nintendo 64): A Weird and Wonderful Achievement

Resident Evil is in a class of its own regarding horror games. Tons of big names in horror have come and gone over the years, along with the genres they helped pioneer, and those that are still around tend to release mediocre or otherwise unremarkable games. Resident Evil, on the other hand, has - aside from a few dud entries - achieved a consistent level of quality. The game coined the term "survival horror", after all.

Resident Evil games tend to make headlines when they're released and have become a bit of an event for those avid horror fans who can't quite get the same quality from anywhere else. Resident Evil was mostly a PlayStation-exclusive property at the beginning of its lifespan. The first three major Resident Evil games, along with the infamously bad Resident Evil Survivor, are associated with not only being solely available on the PS1, but defining it as a console; you don't get the PS1 without Resident Evil. It's hard to overstate just how influential the Resident Evil series has been on gaming as a whole, and it seems like it was the biggest missed opportunity in the world for Nintendo to have initially missed out on this all-encompassing survival-horror craze.

Or did they?

It's hard to overstate just how influential the Resident Evil series has been on gaming as a whole...

On November 16th, 1999, the second major installment of the Resident Evil series hit the cult-classic Nintendo N64 almost two years after its initial release for the PS1. Most people I interact with don't even know that this version of Resident Evil 2 even exists, let alone have a copy of it stuffed in an attic somewhere. It has been my gaming White Whale for quite some time, having spent the last few years perusing expo halls and thrift shops looking for a copy of this elusive horror title. I was starting to think maybe I had created this game's existence in my mind with a gaggle of internet users sharing in my fever dream delusions, forever doomed to stalk dusty bins of beat-up N64 games until the end of time, chasing something that never existed. That was to be my fate, until this year. In the convention hall of the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in Portland, Oregon, I was finally given vindication. I procured a copy of Resident Evil 2 for the N64 from one of the many gaming merchants covering the show floor, the only copy I was able to find at the entire show. At last one of the weirdest horror games I had ever heard of was mine.

Resident Evil 2 for the N64 (from now on I will refer to it as RE2 64 - the '90s loved their numbered games) is not only an oddity in the N64's legacy but a genuine technical marvel. The port was handled by a little developer known as Angel Studios. They're now better known by their current title: Rockstar San Diego. Before they became the gaming icons responsible for creating the likes of Red Dead Redemption and the Midnight Club series, Angel Studios had only developed a few smaller racing titles and some sports games, having almost no experience with horror in any capacity. When Capcom signed a 4-title exclusivity deal with Nintendo in the 1990s, Angel Studios was brought on to do the impossible: port Resident Evil 2 onto an N64 cartridge.

The humble cartridge had been the bane of the N64 since it's inception in 1996. The internal memory of a cartridge is paltry, even by 1990's standards, with anywhere between 4 and 64 megabytes of storage space available. With only 388 games released for the system, that means that (on the high end) the entirety of the N64's library would take up no more than 25 gigabytes, assuming each cartridge was the 64MB variant, which they definitely were not. Looking at Nintendo's competition at the time reveals a much more optimized story. A PlayStation CD held anywhere between 100MB and 2GB of storage space. The smallest available discs for the PS1 was nearly double the capacity of the largest available N64 cartridge. Coupled with the fact that cartridges were extremely expensive to manufacture compared to CDs, it's clear why the N64 struggled with third-party support and had such a small catalogue of available titles. Development for the thing was just too difficult and time-consuming to be fruitful.

Angel Studios was brought on to do the impossible: port Resident Evil 2 onto an N64 cartridge.

That brings us to the RE2 64 port. The original game was (somewhat accidentally) a two-disc PS1 release, clocking in at a whopping 1.2GB file size. For the N64 port, Angel Studios was tasked with taking those 1.2GB of necessary files and shrinking it down to a minuscule 64MB, effectively having to condense the game down by 19 times its original size. This was a task that they merely stated as being "challenging." Mind you, this isn't just any shovelware game we're talking about here, this is Resident Evil 2. A game that was universally praised for its survival-horror game play, terror-inducing atmosphere, beautiful graphics, and unparalleled cut scenes. Angel Studios had to move mountains in order to get this task completed, and move mountains they did.

Not only was Angel Studios able to port the entire game to the 64MB cartridge, but they even added extra content. Miraculously RE2 64 is considered by many to be the definitive way to experience that game. Sacrifices had to be made, of course. The cut scenes, while still included in all their glory, have been compressed within an inch of their lives. The sound quality also had to be crunched down to essentially the bare minimum. Because of this and the fact that CGI from the 1990s can be challenging to look at, the pre-rendered scenes can be a bit difficult to discern. Not only is it so low resolution you won't ever be entirely sure what you're looking at, but the crunchy audio means you'll have trouble following what they're saying. Still, the fact that Angel Studios didn't cut out a single thing in the N64 release is staggering, even if the sound and visual quality had to take a hit.

What RE2 64 lacks in its cut scenes it makes up for in pretty much every other area. The N64 version actually had a graphical upgrade from the original PS1, with no wobbly textures and higher resolutions as long as you had the Expansion Pak for the system. How they were able to get even more quality when moving to a cartridge is beyond me, but they did it.

To top it all off, the N64 port added a multitude of features not seen in the original. The ability to change the color of the blood was added (a decision that reeks of Nintendo creating stipulations,) a built-in item randomizer that allows you to change up the positions of the zombies, notes, keys, and items, as well as bonus files that allude to the GameCube's Resident Evil Zero significantly before it was released, were all added in as a treat for N64 owners. To add a little more icing to this delectably rotting cake, RE2 64 has the added benefit of a distinct lack of load times. One of the few things cartridges do better than discs is the ability to basically bypass load screens, and RE2 64 takes full advantage of this, booting up immediately and wasting no time in getting into the zombie action.

This may sound funny, but I was surprised when I booted up RE2 64 to find out that, even though I was holding the goofy N64 controller and playing on original hardware, I was actually playing the Resident Evil 2. It was bit-crushed and a little weird, but I was having an honest-to-God RE2 experience. Using the N64 controller's garbage analogue stick and baffling button layout to explore the Racoon City Police Department feels like stepping into a strange parallel universe. There are some hiccups here and there – any time you pick up an item or open your inventory screen there's a slight delay which can really break up the tension at certain points – but I'm going to end up playing RE2 64 from start to finish. It's one thing to find your gaming White Whale, it's another for it to possibly be the best version of that experience available. RE2 64 is one of the strangest additions to the N64 library ever made, and I'm happy it has finally found its proud place on my gaming shelf.