RESIDENT EVIL Ø

RESIDENT EVIL Ø serves as a prequel, dropping us into the events right before the first game and giving us the chance to play as Rebecca Chambers, who's honestly the best part of the game, alongside a new character Billy Coen, who's an awesome cool dude. The story is your typical early RESIDENT EVIL fare involving a train swarming with leeches and a villain who's an opera singing man leech hybrid. The big hook here is the partner system, where you control both Billy and Rebecca at the same time, which is a cool concept that allows for some puzzles where you have to use their unique abilities, but in practice, it just adds another layer of micromanagement that gets exhausting. The visuals hold up well, with the prerendered backgrounds creating the immersive atmosphere that the series is famous for. The real kicker that everyone talks about tho is the nightmare that's the inventory system, they removed the item boxes, so instead of safely stashing your stuff, you just drop it on the floor like a maniac. This combined with a tiny 6 slots inventory per character and big weapons like the shotgun or the hookshot taking up two slots, turns the game into a tedious chore of backtracking that saps all the fun out of exploration. The enemies are also a major pain with some annoying ones like the leech zombies and those stupid monkeys that just stun lock you to death, making combat more of a headache than it needs to be. It's got some great moments and a fantastic atmosphere, but it feels like a step down from the remake that came before it.

Now, shifting gears a bit, there's a wild demake that reimagines this game as if it had been a native PS1 release back in the day. The channel behind it is known for making cool romhacks of PS1 RE games and they knocked it out of the park with this one. It covers the entire Ecliptic Express train section, which is about 20% of the original, but what's there is faithful, complete with the dual character swapping, fixed camera angles, prerendered backgrounds, those classic tank controls, cutscenes from the original and adapted GameCube backgrounds for the lower hardware specs, which obviously means some quality loss but it totally nails that gritty retro feel.

The dev also made new character models for just for this project, and the inventory, instead of having the original's cramped six slots per character bumps it up to eight slots from RESIDENT EVIL 2, so managing your gear actually lets you focus more on the actual survival horror instead of playing item Tetris all the time.

However, someone spoke with the dev like a year ago and the goal was always just to recreate the train area, he never intended to do the full game and everything he accomplished was already insanely complex, especially with the partner system. It makes sense 'cuz getting two characters to work properly in a PS1 engine with the swapping mechanics, AI behavior and all those puzzles that require both of them is a coding nightmare. It's honestly a miracle they pulled off what they did, even if it's just the opening chapter 'cuz that alone is a massive achievement in itself, so yeah, there won't be a full version but it's cool we got what he did.

Download

Now that you've read all about the Ecliptic Express, the leech outbreak and that twisted web of Umbrella's experiments, you're probably itching to actually step into Rebecca's shoes and experience the horror for yourself. First off, your system needs to be running homebrew, no way around that. Once that's checked off, slash the download button below, or if you want a more direct route, fire up the FBI app from your HOME Menu, point that camera at the QR code down below and it'll start pulling the game straight into your console. When the transfer's done, Rebecca will appear on your HOME Menu right alongside your other icons, just like a new key item appearing in your inventory.