TIL: Capcom was going to remake RE2/3/CV on the Gamecube

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

While looking up stuff on Resident Evil, I came across this 2001 article when Capcom announced that the Resident evil series would be developed exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube. In the article was this:

The company will first release a remake version of Biohazard [released on the PlayStation in 1996] on March 22 of next year. It will be followed by the release of Biohazard 0, and then remake versions of Biohazard 2, Biohazard 3, Biohazard Code:Veronica, and finally leading up to the anticipated Biohazard 4.

Putting aside that only two games ended up being exclusive as RE4 came out on the PS2 as well and Code Veronica released on the PS2 in 2001, I had no idea there was a plan to do more than just port 2, 3 and Code Veronica. The exclusivity was well-known, but I feel like this was forgotten because I had no idea this was the plan. Instead, I think everything was just ported.

I guess we got what they planned 18 years later! :-O

JaredTaco · Feb 4, 2019

Could be mistranslation because Capcom did release those games on GameCube (ports, not remakes).

Kaguya · Feb 4, 2019

RE/Nintendo exclusivity was full on WTF! Didn't they go from RE4 will never, ever be on anything else to announcing the PS2 port before the GC release!

LewieP · Feb 4, 2019

I get the feeling that the author is actually just referring to the ports that did come out. Some crossed wires maybe?

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

JaredTaco said:
Could be mistranslation because Capcom did release those games on Switch (ports, not remakes).

Nintendo World reported the same thing.

I did think about that, though.

Adamska · Feb 4, 2019

We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

Jroc · Feb 4, 2019

Would have been nice to have all 4 classic games remade to a consistent standard.

I remember hearing about RE2make way back when, but never the full saga.

Kromeo · Feb 4, 2019

That photo makes it look like neither are happy about the deal lol

Not sure why Veronica would be remake, was the Gamecube that much more powerful than the Dreamcast?

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

I think they announced it wasn't exclusive before RE4 released, actually. 2004 IIRC

EDIT: Yup.

Randam · Feb 4, 2019

yeah, heard that before.
after the disappointing sales of REmake 1 and Zero they scrapped the rest and just ported them I guess.

LewieP · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

Not true, PS2 version was announced before the Gamecube version had released.

Adamska · Feb 4, 2019

LewieP said:
Not true, PS2 version was announced before the Gamecube version had released.

ThisThingIsUseful said:
I think they announced it wasn't exclusive before RE4 released, actually. 2004 IIRC

It still took a year for it to be ported, guess that's why I misremembered.

Bonejack · Feb 4, 2019

ThisThingIsUseful said:
I think they announced it wasn't exclusive before RE4 released, actually. 2004 IIRC

If my memory doesn't fail in this case, they even announced the PS2 close to the release of the GCN version.

Just checked, PS2 ver announced Nov 2004, GCN release was in January 2005.

Jawmuncher · Feb 4, 2019

If I recall, the only remake that was even slightly planned after 0 was 2. But since 0 had so much criticism and didn't reach expectations. Plans to make any other remakes were scrapped.

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
It still took a year for it to be ported, guess that's why I misremembered.

It actually came out the same year, but it felt like a year because GC was January and PS2 was fall.

Sorry, I hate being the "WELL ASHUALLY" guy. =:

Deleted member 3017 · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

They anticipated weak sales based on GCN"s commercial performance, as the PS2 port was announced months before the game launched. Mikami had a ton of control over his own projects, but Capcom eventually took some of that control away.

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

Jawmuncher said:
If I recall, the only remake that was even slightly planned after 0 was 2. But since 0 had so much criticism and didn't reach expectations. Plans to make any other remakes were scrapped.

I guess that was probably it? Maybe if the GC were more successful, full remakes of the originals would have already been available.

Then again, I really like the RE2 remake, so maybe it's OK that was waited lol.

Soapbox Killer · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

I believe it had to do with the rest of the "Capcom 5" and the troubles all those games were having and not the sales of RE4, which like others have said wasn't out when Capcom said they were going to port the game.

To be fair, it is arugbly the greatest game ever made so sales, no matter what platform are underwhelming.

justiceiro · Feb 4, 2019

Probably for the best. I don't think we would have gotten this remake if one already existed before.

Kaguya · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

PS2 version was announced before the GC version was even released. It was more disappointment in GC sales, REmake/0 sales and potintial RE4 sales than actually looking at RE4 sales numbers.

Arttemis · Feb 4, 2019

This was absolutely supposed to happen. It was one of the reasons I bought a GameCube.

The fact that it did not happen was also widely talked about a decade ago. It was notorious as a reason to not put blindly accept exclusive contracts. A similar sentiment was expressed after Agent on PS3, except that just became vaporware.

Anecdotally, I remember people used to accuse (some in jest, some serious) every exclusive of becoming one of the most widely ported games as was RE4.

Adamska · Feb 4, 2019

ThisThingIsUseful said:
It actually came out the same year, but it felt like a year because GC was January and PS2 was fall.

Sorry, I hate being the "WELL ASHUALLY" guy. =:

Hah, don't worry, I know I could've looked up this info before posting but decided to trust my memory.

LewieP · Feb 4, 2019

Announcing the PS2 version hurt the Gamecube release.

jett · Feb 4, 2019

Fairly certain they just meant the straight ports that the Gamecube got.

LewieP said:
Announcing the PS2 version hurt the Gamecube release.

Being on the Gamecube hurt the Gamecube release. The whole plan of moving the franchise to the Gamecube was idiotic and diminished the popularity of the brand for a while. Mikami had a weird thing against Sony I guess, what with Code Veronica originally being made for the Dreamcast and the PS2 getting a heavily-belated port.

cvxfreak · Feb 4, 2019

RE2/3/CV were never meant to be remade for GameCube. That was just dodgy reporting at the time. They were always intended as ports to compliment RE0's previously planned release.

L_Blue · Feb 4, 2019

Must have been ports. Does anyone seriously think that they would have had time to develop completely remade versions of 2, 3 and CV, all whilst working on RE4 for a 2005 release at the same time?

Kopite · Feb 4, 2019

How did Capcom end up making so many exclusive games or initially exclusive games for the GC, was it a Nintendo moneyhat or?

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

Arttemis said:
This was absolutely supposed to happen. It was one of the reasons I bought a GameCube.

The fact that it did not happen was also widely talked about a decade ago. It was notorious as a reason to not put blindly accept exclusive contracts. A similar sentiment was expressed after Agent on PS3, except that just became vaporware.

Anecdotally, I remember people used to accuse (some in jest, some serious) every exclusive of becoming one of the most widely ported games as was RE4.

Nice to hear of someone who remembers when this was announced.

The fact that I'm seeing it on a few sites means if that's not what they meant, then I don't think they communicated it properly. I read that and was like O_O

Adamska said:
Hah, don't worry, I know I could've looked up this info before posting but decided to trust my memory.

Yeah, no biggie. The minute I see that I'm correcting someone twice, I usually get self-conscious about it because I hate doing that lol

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

L_Blue said:
Must have been ports. Does anyone seriously think that they would have had time to develop completely remade versions of 2, 3 and CV, all whilst working on RE4 for a 2005 release at the same time?

Eh, at that point in time, I could see that. They released quite a bit because games were overall smaller, less detailed, with worse AI and usually worse voice acting since even bigger games at the time didn't have voice acting as good as it is now. I mean they were doing REmake, RE0, Dino Crisis, Devil May Cry 1 - 3, Viewtiful Joe 1 - 2, the Capcom Five (including RE4)...

Jroc · Feb 4, 2019

L_Blue said:
Must have been ports. Does anyone seriously think that they would have had time to develop completely remade versions of 2, 3 and CV, all whilst working on RE4 for a 2005 release at the same time?

REmake only took 14 months to develop.

They probably could have done it if they really wanted to.

andymcc · Feb 4, 2019

Mikami was very resentful of Sony. I'm not sure if it was because the console was harder to develop for, if he didn't like Sony's view for the system as an all-in-one entertainment device, or if Sony just didn't offer the same support other console developers of the time did-- the Dreamcast ver. of RE:CV had Sega staff helping Capcom staff directly iirc. There's the infamous "cut of my own head" (approximate quote) line from Mikami regarding if RE4 made it to a Sony console.

jett said:
Being on the Gamecube hurt the Gamecube release..

Yep.

Nuclear Muffin · Feb 4, 2019

Probably just a mistranslation. Pretty sure there was never any intention to remake the other games on Gamecube (they would never have been able to remake them all before the generation was over anyway!)

Big G · Feb 4, 2019

I seem to remember a follow-up story not too long after where Capcom clarified that this meant the ports of RE2/RE3/CVX. Because they were remaking RE1 there was some confusion.

jett said:
Fairly certain they just meant the straight ports that the Gamecube got.

Being on the Gamecube hurt the Gamecube release. The whole plan of moving the franchise to the Gamecube was idiotic and diminished the popularity of the brand for a while. Mikami had a weird thing against Sony I guess, what with Code Veronica originally being made for the Dreamcast and the PS2 getting a heavily-belated port.

This. The games were hugely successful on the PS1 and the PS2 was an even more popular console, so of course they put out their new games as exclusives to the two least-popular consoles of that generation.

Capcom had to have been fuming by the time they got out of their contract and announced the PS2 version of RE4. Not just at Mikami, but also at Nintendo for their lack of support in ensuring these Capcom exclusives were successful for both the GameCube and for Capcom.

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

andymcc said:
Mikami was very resentful of Sony. I'm not sure if it was because the console was harder to develop for, if he didn't like Sony's view for the system as an all-in-one entertainment device, or if Sony just didn't offer the same support other console developers of the time did-- the Dreamcast ver. of RE:CV had Sega staff helping Capcom staff directly iirc. There's the infamous "cut of my own head" (approximate quote) line from Mikami regarding if RE4 made it to a Sony console.

Yep.

According to a Kotaku article, the PS2 being very hard to develop for drove his thinking. Xbox guys had a bad meeting with him and couldn't convince him to put it on the Xbox.

Nuclear Muffin said:
Probably just a mistranslation. Pretty sure there was never any intention to remake the other games on Gamecube (they would never have been able to remake them all before the generation was over anyway!)

Are we sure about this? REmake took a little over a year, and considering how much shorter development time was and how much smaller the games are, it seems like something that actually would have been possible at the time. I mean, REmake, RE0 and RE4? And three Devil May Cry games? And a Dino Crisis? And in 2000, Code Veronica? Seems doable. I feel like the sales of REmake and maybe 0 affected this.

ZeoVGM · Feb 4, 2019

cvxfreak said:
RE2/3/CV were never meant to be remade for GameCube. That was just dodgy reporting at the time. They were always intended as ports to compliment RE0's previously planned release.

Came in the thread to say this.

Mugy · Feb 4, 2019

Mikami was pretty hot-head regarding the PlayStation brand in general. I got this interview from GameInformer where (supposedly) say that the PS2 high number of selled systems were because of the poor quality of the DVD lens. Therefore, people had to buy another system sooner or later. He also apparently rant over the fact that Kingdom Hearts sold more in Japan than REmake back in the day:

kubev · Feb 4, 2019

Adamska said:
We do know that RE4 was such a disappointment on GC sales-wise that Capcom walked back on that exclusivity policy and released the game to PS2 and PC.

Didn't RE4 only come to exist because of that "Capcom Five" exclusivity deal? Given the fact that Capcom struck the deal to help bolster GameCube's third-party support, it's not surprising that the games involved in the deal underperformed and made it to other platforms. One of the "Five" was even canceled, and I think all but one of the four that made it out - that being P.N.03 - ended up being released on other platforms.

thepenguin55 · Feb 4, 2019

cvxfreak said:
RE2/3/CV were never meant to be remade for GameCube. That was just dodgy reporting at the time. They were always intended as ports to compliment RE0's previously planned release.

I mean, what you're saying is the only option that would make any sense with what is stated in the article. The plan was always just to port those games to GCN before the launch of RE4. As far as the release timeline goes at that point they were probably aiming to have RE4 launch in '04 with REmake out in '02 & Zero out in '03 so having remakes of RE2, RE3 & CVX exhaustively done in the style of the RE1 remake all before RE4 launched would absolutely be out of the question because when would they have had time to do them? I don't doubt that a couple Capcom employees at that time may have toyed around with some ideas of what they would've done with RE2 if they were to remake it but I would be surprised if that went beyond (at most) maybe some documents they made (you would probably know more about that than I would though) but even then an actual remake of RE2 is not at all what was being reported on here. Similarly to what you said, content of this article is likely the product of either poor translation or poor choice of words on the part of Capcom, both of which were very common issues with reporting at the time.

Mugy · Feb 4, 2019

I'm from neither the USA or Japan, but i don't recall any magazine from South America saying that RE2 and RE3 were going to be re-made from the scratch for the GCN in a similar way to Remake (i was buying Club Nintendo - México - Hobby Consolas - Spain - and EDGE back in the day), so i'm not sure if that deal is true. I do remember Nintendo Power translated version (Club Nintendo did that for some guides and articles), saying that "Gamecube was the only system in the world where you could play all the Resident Evil series as a whole" , but anything about remakes.

Probably the funniest fact about RE4 and Mikami in general was his legenday quote, saying that he was going to cut his head off if RE4 came out in anything but the Gamecube, lol

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

kubev said:
Didn't RE4 only come to exist because of that "Capcom Five" exclusivity deal? Given the fact that Capcom struck the deal to help bolster GameCube's third-party support, it's not surprising that the games involved in the deal underperformed and made it to other platforms. One of the "Five" was even canceled, and I think all but one of the four that made it out - that being P.N.03 - ended up being released on other platforms.

The fourth game being an exclusive was announced before the GameCube was even released, and the Capcom 5 was announced after that.

Laserdisk · Feb 4, 2019

JaredTaco said:
Could be mistranslation because Capcom did release those games on Switch (ports, not remakes).

Yep and on DC also

Laserdisk · Feb 4, 2019

jett said:
Fairly certain they just meant the straight ports that the Gamecube got.

Being on the Gamecube hurt the Gamecube release. The whole plan of moving the franchise to the Gamecube was idiotic and diminished the popularity of the brand for a while. Mikami had a weird thing against Sony I guess, what with Code Veronica originally being made for the Dreamcast and the PS2 getting a heavily-belated port.

How? I was in retail at the time and that thing sold gamecubes like gangbusters

DanteLinkX · Feb 4, 2019

JaredTaco said:
Could be mistranslation because Capcom did release those games on Switch (ports, not remakes).

On switch? Dazzed and confused.

jett · Feb 4, 2019

Mugy said:
Mikami was pretty hot-head regarding the PlayStation brand in general. I got this interview from GameInformer where (supposedly) say that the PS2 high number of selled systems were because of the poor quality of the DVD lens. Therefore, people had to buy another system sooner or later. He also apparently rant over the fact that Kingdom Hearts sold more in Japan than REmake back in the day:

Was he shilling for a job at Nintendo or something. Just a bunch of bizarre statements.

Laserdisk said:
How? I was in retail at the time and that thing sold gamecubes like gangbusters

RE games went from selling multi-million units to something that barely cleared one million.

Acquiescence · Feb 4, 2019

What the hell did Sony do to Mikami to convince him to turn his back on the fanbase built up from those millions of copies sold on the PS1? Man, what a bone-headed decision to make in retrospect.

Kapten · Feb 4, 2019

Yepp. I heard the same thing back then.

Was waiting for REmake2 since the release on 1 on GC.

ThisThingIsUseful · Feb 4, 2019

Acquiescence said:
What the hell did Sony do to Mikami to convince him to turn his back on the fanbase built up from those millions of copies sold on the PS1? Man, what a bone-headed decision to make in retrospect.

According to Kotaku, being hard to develop for. Judging by his other quote, I guess he hated the hardware overall.

Hieroph · Feb 4, 2019

Not surprising. Capcom probably had big expectations for the Gamecube, otherwise they wouldn't have done that deal.

Barrel Cannon · Feb 4, 2019

I think it was a mis-translation. RE4 was their primary focus after Zero was being made. That's how I always understood it as

Goron2000 · Feb 4, 2019

Wow at the kingdom hearts stealing REmake sales quote. Especially funny with the delay of Kingdom Hearts 3 to the same week as REmake 2. Nomura never forgets and never forgives!

TIL: Capcom was going to remake RE2/3/CV on the Gamecube

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