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More than 20 years after its cancellation, one of the most ambitious and bizarre game porting attempts in the history of the industry has resurfaced with a purportedly 98% complete version of Resident Evil that was in development for the Game Boy Color before the project was shut down in 2000.
The roots of the story go back to 1999, when British studio HotGen was given the near-impossible challenge of converting a massive 32-bit, two-disc survival-horror game into an 8-bit, 2MB mobile experience. Despite the enormous technical limitations, the team managed to build an advanced and impressive version that came remarkably close to completion before the project was abruptly canceled.
Over the years, sporadic beta versions of the game have appeared, but they have always been too incomplete to reach the end, but the Games That Weren’t website has recently preserved and published the most complete version ever taken from the last stage of development just before the cancellation.
Associate programmer Pete Frith, who helped make this version available, confirmed that the project was indeed in its final stages, citing the intensity of communication between the development and testing teams, reinforcing the idea that the game was very close to an official release.
According to Frith’s recollection, the reason for the cancellation was not a technical but a creative decision, as the team was informed that the creator of the series did not see the Game Boy Color as suitable for the Resident Evil experience, and it has not been confirmed whether it was Shinji Mikami or Tokuro Fujiwara.
The discovered version contains content not seen in any previous leak, including the appearance of the Tyrant enemy, as well as the full ending of the game, which theoretically opens the possibility of finishing the game from start to finish, and although the site did not confirm this categorically, it provided alternative solutions that allow skipping some sections or going directly to the final confrontation.
Of course, the effects of incompleteness are still evident, such as incomplete cinematic scenes, errors in the colors of some characters, similarities in models, as well as a diluted method of falling zombies when eliminating them, and some followers believe that this modification was an attempt to reduce the level of violence in line with Nintendo’s policies at that time.
Artist Simon Butler commented on the resurfacing of the project, explaining that seeing his drawings after all these years was a strange and moving experience, emphasizing that working on the game was not easy, but it was unique enough to be remembered.
Although this version of Resident Evil never officially saw the light of day, the Game Boy Color later received a standalone game, Resident Evil Gaiden, with a completely different experience. However, this canceled version remains an exceptional chapter in the history of the series, a chapter that would have been erased were it not for the passion of the developers and the efforts of fans of preserving the legacy of games.
