Gaming News Before Resident Evil, there was Sweet Home, the NES RPG horror game
A mansion in the middle of a forest, a team of five people come to unravel the mysteries of the gloomy building, narrow corridors, deadly traps, monstrous creatures haunting the place… does that remind you of anything? Long before the first Resident Evil and his Spencer residence, there was Sweet Home and his house, Mamiya. Capcom’s two games have a common story that we’re going to tell you about. Wear a plaid by the fireplace and pay particular attention to what moves in the dark.
summary
- Turn based horror
- From Mamiya to Mikami
Turn based horror
In January 1989, a horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and produced by Juzo Itami was released in Japanese darkrooms. your name ? sweet home. It tells the story of a television crew entering the estate of the late painter Ichirō Mamiya. The latter would have hidden valuable canvases before his disappearance, which the small group is desperate to find. Unfortunately, young filmmakers will encounter particularly aggressive supernatural beings.
In December 1989, the Capcom-produced adaptation of the video game Sweet Home was released. It is Tokurô Fujiwara, known for his work on Ghosts’n Goblins and Bionic Commando, who is handling the project. He decides to make a terrifying role-playing game based on the mechanics of the genre with a top-view camera, random battles (that take place in first-person perspective), turn-based, limited inventory, and teammates with different skills. In addition, five endings are available depending on the number of survivors left at the end of the adventure.
With its (for the time) visually pleasing haunted house, its narrow corridors, its traps, its monsters, its numerous documents to read, its protagonists with specific abilities and its door openings, which are done from a subjective point of view, Sweet Home is inevitably reminiscent of Capcom’s future survival horror which will be released with Resident Evil in 1996. And it’s quite normal: Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine’s adventure was basically planned as a spiritual sequel to Sweet Home.
From Mamiya to Mikami
While the Sweet Home Squad searches for Ichirō Mamiya’s paintings, another tortured artist is invited to the devil’s building: Shinji Mikami. In the early 1990s, however, the young Capcom developer was far from imagining that he would one day take charge of one of the decade’s preeminent horror series. Used to video game adaptations of Disney films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Aladdin or Goof Troop (Goofy), Mikami is noticed by Tokurô Fujiwara. The latter, impressed by the quality of the game designer’s productions, offers the young developer to create a horrific title for the PlayStation. He sells her the project as “spiritual consequence‘ from Sweet Home. Shinji Mikami agrees, despite not being a fan of horror movies. What interests him is elsewhere: Fujiwara promises him that he can afford to venture into this project and that he doesn’t have to worry about future sales of the product.
Thus begins the fabulous story of Resident Evil. Shinji Mikami draws various elements from Sweet Home (a group locked in a gloomy building) while exonerating others (the fantastic dimension, the ghosts). It keeps doorways in first-person view to hide loading times while eliminating the fact that minions always accompany the player. pursuit of realism, He ditches the RPG aspect in favor of something more direct. Originally conceived as an FPS, Resident Evil connects the pre-calculated 3D sets in which the protagonists develop. A technique successfully used by Alone in the Dark a few years ago. In total, around thirty artists work over two years to meet Mikami’s diverse requirements.
While Capcom thought it would only sell 150,000, Resident Evil will become the first PlayStation game to reach one million copies sold in Japan. A complete success that will catapult Mikami into the high spheres of Capcom. For its part, Sweet Home will not return to cinema or the world of video games. Rest in peace.
